It's exciting to wake up to this note from the Slovakian Ambassador, Peter Zsoldos, who is also a poetry translator:
Congratulations, Yahia, 13 million Hungarians can read your work in Central and Eastern Europe. Happy day.
Peter
Here’s some background information about the special issue my work appears in, courtesy of the ambassador/translator:
The Hungarian literary journal Opus released in September my poem "Dawning" and a number of my aphorisms.
My work was accompanied by poems from another Egyptian poet Iman Mersal and the Libyan poet, writer and translator Ashur Etwebi [who] lives in Norway as a refugee.
The three of you us are introduced by Adonis (no less!) writing about exile and the fate of the Arab poet following the biblical story of Hagar and Ismael.
The whole section ends with three verses from The Koran - Sura 26, on Poets.
Below, is my lucky poem, in English :
Dawning
There are hours when every thing creaks
when chairs stretch their arms, tables their legs
and closets crack their backs, incautiously
Fed up with the polite fantasy
of having to stay in one place
and stick to their stations
Humans too, at work, or in love
know such aches and growing pains
when inner furnishings defiantly shift
As decisively, and imperceptibly, as a continent
some thing will stretch, croak or come undone
so that everything else must be reconsidered
One restless dawn, unable to suppress the itch
of wanderlust, with a heavy door left ajar
semi-deliberately, and a new light teasing in
Some piece of immobility will finally quit
suddenly nimble on wooden limbs
as fast as a horse, fleeing the stable.
Even after all these years, I’m still surprised which of my poems strike a chord and find their way in the world...
Here’s a recent reading I did, beginning with this poem:
