From Mediterranean Publications, the Moroccan poet Abderrahim Al-Khassar published a new book of poetry entitled “A Scarecrow in a Bedroom in a Field.”
The poet Abdul Rahim Al-Khasar is a writer and writer in the Arab cultural press. He won the Buland Al-Haidari Prize, the Mediterranean Prize for Poetry, and the Helmy Salem Prize for Arabic Poetry. His texts have been translated into French, English, German, Swedish, Spanish, Bulgarian, and Persian.
Among his collections of poetry are “Winter has Finally Arrived,” “The Return of Adam,” “The Wild Captain,” and “Isolation is a Member of the Family.” He also published the novel “The Island of Long Weeping.”
Among the readings in Al-Khasar’s new poetry collection, “A Scarecrow in a Bedroom in a Field,” are: “These words push each other toward the abyss. Alone, you roll rocks after rocks. Eyes are daggers and knives. “Time is a needle in the palm of your hand.”
As the reader reads:
-2-
“A glass of wine in hand. In the other hand, fifty years of anxiety. Love is wearing a smokin’ suit and tapping his fingers on the table. Old air flows between the gray hairs, where memory and smoke are common. As the music grows louder, the gramophone needle pricks his heart. In the hand is a trembling lighter. And in the ashtray there are fires that cannot be extinguished by water.”
-3
“Fly me to the moon. Says an old song by Frank Sinatra. While iron ropes pulled my feet to the ground. The country for which I spread my wings has spread a flock of crows for me. The tragedy sits in front of me in her winter coat. She hears Frank Sinatra and dissolves heartbreak in a cup. The night hurts. On her lips, an ambiguous word trembles. Two tears flow from her eyes. She crosses the hall, waddling. She pushes the door open and stands under the lamp with a closed umbrella. Where winter is nails of water. “Nostalgia is a hammer and anvil.”
-4-
“On the balcony of the house, she sits on a dusty chair. You look at a caribou stuck in a bottle. She tells him about years spent, about betrayed comrades, about a song that everyone has forgotten. While he transmits your dreams from century to century. Suddenly other ibex arrive, their antlers intertwined in your hands. Hope is an old soldier with a crutch in his hand. Love is a fifty-year-old whore playing with her lighter. She sits alone at the end of the counter.”
-5-
Al-Khasar wrote to Mubarak Wasat:
“I may appear to you alone at the table. However, I regret the dead. And when I withdraw my hand from its rest, they emerge one by one from a book. I listen to a philosopher who has been let down by an old idea of love, and I extend my hand to remove a rope from his neck. A sculptor fidgets on a chair nearby, complaining to me of a paralyzing tremor in his hands. From behind the glass facade, a crazy poet laughs. I raise my eyes to a painting hanging in front of me, and a girl in a garden waves to me. I motion to her and she sits in front of me. A girl with a white hat and a long skirt. As she recites poems she wrote about deprivation, a dead violinist gets drunk and fills our table with tears.”
The group also reads:
-6-
This is me. A scarecrow in a room, and a bed in a field. I sleep in a garage, and wake up in a forest. I hide suns, bones, and postage stamps in my closet. I also hide eagles’ eggs and wood ashes. I regret dead poets. I read fewer words, and write fewer words. I pity those who left tired wombs. And I bless the dead for their death. My heart is a grove that accommodates the wounded. And gold flows from my eyes. I embrace the world and do not let its thorns disgrace me. When spears intertwine in my path, I cross, spreading my arms outstretched in pain. My smile heals a sick river, and shakes off depression from the night’s shoulders.
This is me. A scarecrow in a room, and a bed in a field.”
#Scarecrow #Bedroom #book #Khasar
2024-04-16 02:52:16