Borders
For thirty years I couldn’t cross two steps
from the public square
Or share the parting dance of the homeless
For thirty years I did not understand the groans of God
I filled my hands with the snow of a gasping night
The policemen pointed rifles into faded faces
They pointed to sacks of body parts
It was not language that boarded the train
It was not dreams that sang in the lantern’s song
No, no. It was not that
At noon
Shadows came down the slope and were gone. Men were gone. Women and children gone
At noon
Death came and another death and another . . .
Things You Can Hear
The road to the heart cannot be taken on a camel
The road to the heart cannot be taken on a dream
When dozy, many things can be heard:
the rolling of a football between children’s feet
the cracking of a pebble from the roof of a house
the trembling of a bird’s wing migrating south
the sigh of an old woman, sitting in a porch of a grand house
the squeaking of a nest
the first blossoming of the apricot tree
From the window of the world:
I see the dark cover of night
the whistling of the guards
flowers across a riverbank
a man who follows me
under my pillow I keep a sun that, when it grows
becomes younger and younger
Tawirghean
I wish they took their animals with them.
I wish they took their fires with them.
Tawirghean refugees, a man and a woman,
their memories shine on the dead general’s chest.
My path doesn’t lead to you. Your path doesn’t lead to me.
I am three hot potatoes. You are a kiln boiling with words.
Inside their house there is a room for tears.
The window is just a window,
but the hands of the dead are heavy with questions.
Crows throw our souls into a deep black hole.
A well without water is like a pulley without a thread.
Even officials rarely knock on doors.
Their eyes long for farms like a blind man walking through the night.
To tell this story is like pulling a river from your pocket.
What are you waiting for? The post to arrive!
A Dog Hides Its Tail in the Darkness of Night
In my village, Etwebia, in the last drop of wine in the glass
I see the tree I planted in front of the guest room
I see its yellow flowers blossom in winter
where I used to sit with the red-chested bird
I drink my glass cold, the way I like it
and he takes peanuts from my hat the way he likes
Oh, my tree, my winter tree!
Oh, my Etwebia, captured by militias
I used to enjoy the pouring rain
I used to hear it falling through thirsty sand
Now, in a country ravaged by death, rain loses its sound
Drops tangle in blue, fall, fall, fall silent
A dog hides its tail in the darkness of night
The water rises high. The olive tree listens in
A House in the Wind
Fragile afternoon
a vast sea, vacant trees, a butterfly, and a grave
I am here, the villagers are here
Stories in foreign languages are here Broken tongues are here
I wish, I knew, I leaned on absence
I wish, I knew, the cricket frightened the maggot
I wish, I knew, words adrift and the coffee was light
I wish, I knew, eyes veiled and the bell was cursed
Boats of the poor
Made sails for the faces of refugees
only those who are scared
build houses in the wind
Five Poems
Ashur Etwebi
translated from the Arabic by Ashur Etwebi and James Byrne
Listen to the poems read in the original Arabic by the poet:
I first met Ashur Etwebi at the Al-Sendian Cultural Festival in Syria in 2009. He gave a captivating reading, silencing an audience of about a thousand people in the valley amphitheatre. He and I became fast friends in a country on the precipice of war.
Later, when French and British planes bombed Libya, Ashur went underground for a while and I wrote a poem as a way to reach him. When he reemerged in a new Libya, Ashur invited me to his hometown, Tripoli, just months after Gaddafi had been killed. With Khaled Mattawa, he organized the first international poetry festival held in the country to celebrate, what I then perceived, as a new atmosphere of freedom for Libyan writers (Gaddafi had banned several writers’ meetings and his followers used to celebrate him as the country’s foremost author). Not long after this, perhaps because of his internationalism and visibility, a militia burned down Ashur’s house. His family were lucky to escape with their lives. Ashur now lives in Trondheim, Norway, in political asylum.
Ashur and I met for a third time in August 2017, in a very different but, once again, extraordinary place: a glacier-surrounded town in Svalbard, the nearest archipelago to the North Pole. Ashur was on a residency there, writing every day (“so I don’t have to think about other things,” he told me). In a typical spirit of collaboration, he broke his routine and, during twenty-four-hour light, we worked for a solid week on literal translations he’d sent me six months previously. The process was intense: usually two shifts, day and night, involving not just word-by-word or line-by-line translational methods but chewing over semantic and formal possibilities for each poem, reading aloud, and discussing cultural elements of Libyan society.
The poems presented here were written after Ashur was granted political asylum. They retain the same musical ear and interest in the world as his earlier work, the same Sufi-like concern for humanity. His anaphoric tenacity, especially in “Things You Can Hear” and “A House in the Wind,” approaches incantation or prayer. Ashur is able to give something of himself away, freely, to the poem. What is left is a scar, as he folds and unfolds the complexities of his life and those of his fellow Libyans.
Some poems were, I imagine, particularly difficult to write. For example, “Village of Etwebia” signifies the orange orchard Ashur used to wake up to, and the house that was torched.
At times in Svalbard, we had to break off and focus on the language and sound of the poem. I have a distinct memory of Ashur in Libya, leading a dance under the Marcus Aurelius gate as the festival got underway. In the distance, soldiers, some who looked no more than children, lined the perimeter fence. As in this scene, Ashur’s poems bear witness, but also celebrate, a country that continues to be torn apart.
—James Byrne, March 4, 2018
Later, when French and British planes bombed Libya, Ashur went underground for a while and I wrote a poem as a way to reach him. When he reemerged in a new Libya, Ashur invited me to his hometown, Tripoli, just months after Gaddafi had been killed. With Khaled Mattawa, he organized the first international poetry festival held in the country to celebrate, what I then perceived, as a new atmosphere of freedom for Libyan writers (Gaddafi had banned several writers’ meetings and his followers used to celebrate him as the country’s foremost author). Not long after this, perhaps because of his internationalism and visibility, a militia burned down Ashur’s house. His family were lucky to escape with their lives. Ashur now lives in Trondheim, Norway, in political asylum.
Ashur and I met for a third time in August 2017, in a very different but, once again, extraordinary place: a glacier-surrounded town in Svalbard, the nearest archipelago to the North Pole. Ashur was on a residency there, writing every day (“so I don’t have to think about other things,” he told me). In a typical spirit of collaboration, he broke his routine and, during twenty-four-hour light, we worked for a solid week on literal translations he’d sent me six months previously. The process was intense: usually two shifts, day and night, involving not just word-by-word or line-by-line translational methods but chewing over semantic and formal possibilities for each poem, reading aloud, and discussing cultural elements of Libyan society.
The poems presented here were written after Ashur was granted political asylum. They retain the same musical ear and interest in the world as his earlier work, the same Sufi-like concern for humanity. His anaphoric tenacity, especially in “Things You Can Hear” and “A House in the Wind,” approaches incantation or prayer. Ashur is able to give something of himself away, freely, to the poem. What is left is a scar, as he folds and unfolds the complexities of his life and those of his fellow Libyans.
Some poems were, I imagine, particularly difficult to write. For example, “Village of Etwebia” signifies the orange orchard Ashur used to wake up to, and the house that was torched.
At times in Svalbard, we had to break off and focus on the language and sound of the poem. I have a distinct memory of Ashur in Libya, leading a dance under the Marcus Aurelius gate as the festival got underway. In the distance, soldiers, some who looked no more than children, lined the perimeter fence. As in this scene, Ashur’s poems bear witness, but also celebrate, a country that continues to be torn apart.
—James Byrne, March 4, 2018
Ashur Etwebi was born in 1952 in Libya. Since December 2014, he has been living in Norway after he was attacked by extremists and his house in Tripoli was burned down. He is one of Libya’s leading poets and is also an editor, translator, and painter. Ashur has published nine volumes of poetry and seven volumes of translations, including a selection of Divan Shams Tabriz by Jalal Al-Deen Rumi. Poems from Above the Hill: Selected Poems of Ashur Etwebi was translated by Brenda Hillman and Dialla Haidar and published in the United States in 2011. Selections of his poetry have been translated into English, Italian, French, Polish, German, Turkish, Serbian, and Persian. Before he left Libya, Etwebi organized (with Khaled Mattawa) the first Tripoli International Poetry Festival in 2012. He also organized the Poems and Cities poetry festival that travelled the Great Sahara and the Nafusa mountain in 2014. Many internationally-renowned poets participated in both these festivals.
James Byrne is a poet, editor, and translator. His most recent poetry collection is Everything Broken Up Dances (Tupelo Press, 2015). He co-translated and co-edited Bones Will Crow: 15 Contemporary Burmese Poets (Arc Publications, 2012) and is the co-editor of Atlantic Drift: An Anthology of Poetry and Poetics (Edge Hill University Press/Arc Publications, 2017) and Voice Recognition: 21 Poets for the 21st Century (Bloodaxe, 2009). Byrne is senior lecturer in poetry and poetics at Edge Hill University and co-director of EHU Press. He has given readings in Libya and Syria and is renowned for his commitment to international poetries. His translational work with Ashur Etwebi occurred during a residency for ARTICA in Svalbard, near the North Pole, in the summer of 2017.
