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Poetry

Downtown

By Mazen Maarouf
Translated from Arabic by Kareem James Abu-Zeid & Nathalie Handal

My share of sleep:
four hours eleven minutes.

I roll my pierced heart
across the bedcover:
it slams into the door,
leaving

a line of mud behind.
I believe
a tree

will come one night
and stop

beside the line.

Another tree

will follow,

and a third,

a fourth,
a ninth,
etc.

One night
the line will grow

and become a street.
One night
while I’m sleeping
friends will stream
out of my head

and into the street
to sleep beneath the trees.
And I,
one night,
will wake
from fear of solitude
and follow them.

© Mazen Maarouf. By arrangement with the author. Translation © 2014 by Kareem James Abu-Zeid and Nathalie Handal. All rights reserved.

English Arabic (Original)

My share of sleep:
four hours eleven minutes.

I roll my pierced heart
across the bedcover:
it slams into the door,
leaving

a line of mud behind.
I believe
a tree

will come one night
and stop

beside the line.

Another tree

will follow,

and a third,

a fourth,
a ninth,
etc.

One night
the line will grow

and become a street.
One night
while I’m sleeping
friends will stream
out of my head

and into the street
to sleep beneath the trees.
And I,
one night,
will wake
from fear of solitude
and follow them.

© Mazen Maarouf. By arrangement with the author. Translation © 2014 by Kareem James Abu-Zeid and Nathalie Handal. All rights reserved.

داون تاون

حصتي من النوم

أربع ساعات وإحدى عشرة دقيقة..

أكرّج قلب المثقوب

على غطاء السرير

يرتطم بالباب

تاركا زيحاً من الوحل خلفه.

أصدّقُ

بأن شجرة

ستأتي ذات ليلة

لتقف

ٳلى جانب الزيح.

شجرة أخرى

ستتبعها،

شجرة ثالثة

رابعة

تاسعة.. ٳلخ.

الزيح

ذات ليلة

سيسمن ويصير شارعاً

الأصدقاء

ذات ليلة

سوف يسيلون من رأسي أثناء النوم،

يدخلون الشارع

وينامون تحت الأشجار

وأنا

ذات ليلة

سأستيقظ خائفاً من الوحدة

وأتبعهم.

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