Posts by Catherine Cobham

Translation Tuesday: Two Poems by Ghayath Almadhoun

All the metaphors in this poem are based on a true story that has not happened before

This Translation Tuesday, prose poems come in from Palestinian poet Ghayath Almadhoun, translated with care by Catherine Cobham. A warning label alerts us to the peculiar nature of the metaphors in “Poet in Berlin”. Almadhoun’s poet starts, stops, and starts over, as if trying to get the metaphors in his head to express the correct thing. His slow progress perplexes the detective trapped in the poem’s dense and mazey interior—he needs that warning as much as we do. In “Everything’s the Same” the sorrow of a sudden disappearance is ‘green’, ‘still fresh’, and we find grief and shock doing their customary thing. The poet stalks the house he once shared with the absent presence. Time is either stopped dead or winding backwards, his senses are heightened, and household objects take on a sudden, dangerous redolence.

Poet in Berlin

All the metaphors in this poem are based on a true story that has not happened before

A lonely man with green eyes and a blue gaze, searching for a woman carrying a forest, who went into the sea and did not return.

Lonely as a bench in a public park, most of those who have touched his wound think he is a poet from Berlin, but he is in fact a poet in Berlin.

He resembles a park bench, and therefore, he used to swear to passers-by that a woman he loved took him to the sea and brought him back thirsty, and in another account, in a poem they found in a pocket of his blue shirt, he said she brought him back from the sea thirsty, but she did not return. On the other hand, the Poetry Foundation in Chicago has not been able to verify the truth of the information contained in this poem.

A lonely man, in a city crowded with lonely people, he assured the German police that he took full responsibility for the disappearance of a woman as ripe as a peach tree.

The detective asked him to stop using metaphor, because the investigation report was not a postmodern poem, and in any case the sea could not possibly be a crime scene in this city, for even in David Bowie’s most defiant songs there was no sea in Berlin, then he added as calmly as an abandoned house, I cannot bring any charges against you at the present time, for as of the date of the writing of this poem, no official reports have been submitted about the disappearance of a woman who looks like the sunset, walks like a herd of gazelles, and loves summer and children. Furthermore, according to German law, there is no crime if there is no body.

A lonely man with green eyes and a blue gaze went into the sea to look for a woman who went into the sea and did not return, and he did not return.

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Translation Tuesday: Two Prose Poems by Ghayath Almadhoun

Massacre is a dead metaphor that is eating my friends, eating them without salt.

In solidarity with the refugees and citizens of seven Muslim countries recently barred from entering the US, we spotlight today the work of Syria-born Ghayath Almadhoun, the poet to whom Jazra Khaleed dedicated his “The War is Coming” poem three weeks ago in this very showcase. Especially in the second poem, “Massacre,” the stark and brutal reality of war is driven home.

Shaken by the developments coming out of America in the past few days, we at Asymptote have been working around the clock to try to fundraise for a Special Feature spotlighting new writing from the seven banned countries in our next issue, in an attempt to offer a high-profile platform for those newly affected by the fallout of those developments. If you are an author who identifies as being from Iraq, Syria, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen (or someone who translates such authors)—and would like to submit work for consideration, please get in touch at editors@asymptotejournal.com.

How I became…

Her grief fell from the balcony and broke into pieces, so she needed a new grief. When I went with her to the market the prices were unreal, so I advised her to buy a used grief. We found one in excellent condition although it was a bit big. As the vendor told us, it belonged to a young poet who had killed himself the previous summer. She liked this grief so we decided to take it. We argued with the vendor over the price and he said he’d give us an angst dating from the sixties as a free gift if we bought the grief. We agreed, and I was happy with this unexpected angst. She sensed this and said ‘It’s yours’. I took it and put it in my bag and we went off. In the evening I remembered it and took it out of the bag and examined it closely. It was high quality and in excellent condition despite half a century of use. The vendor must have been unaware of its value otherwise he wouldn’t have given it to us in exchange for buying a young poet’s low quality grief. The thing that pleased me most about it was that it was existentialist angst, meticulously crafted and containing details of extraordinary subtlety and beauty. It must have belonged to an intellectual with encyclopedic knowledge or a former prisoner. I began to use it and insomnia became my constant companion. I became an enthusiastic supporter of peace negotiations and stopped visiting relatives. There were increasing numbers of memoirs in my bookshelves and I no longer voiced my opinion, except on rare occasions. Human beings became more precious to me than nations and I began to feel a general ennui, but what I noticed most was that I had become a poet.

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