Bilquis's Basil puplished Poetic Collection by Mohammad Noaman Al-Hakimi taiz, Yemen Poem by Mohammad Noaman Al-Hakimi

Bilquis Basil
Poems by/ Mohammad Noaman Al-Hakimi






1-On Lady Bilquiss Mashqor
When the nights commit themselves
To flame,
Into this great unnamed house,
This house with no visible address,
Rooms that never answer your hellos,
You may retire, assured of its silence
Until the Horse appears, as from a dream
Belonging to someone else,
perhaps many others.
He carries her sprig,
The Lady Bilquiss mashqor
Down from great Saber,
The cold mountain
That kept the Seven Sleepers lovely for centuries,
Sheltered from the heat of the sun.
Away in the West,
Books are written
Their pages flutter like dancing scorpions,
We sigh,
Content that the music
Is always here,
bright between the words
Even the words never spoken.
Only a few know this music,
Obey
The final command
to play its song
Opening everything
to the summer clouds
Selling their last flower
For one quicksilver note.
Great men and dark caves are twins
Here in this slow desert
They have their satisfactory potion.
The queen of Sheba bestows her gold,
Incense of the throne, and her love
Freely on the dwellers.
They enjoy the glory that once was
And find her scent
As it is.*
As it is: said by Bilquis (the queen of Sheba) when answering the Prophet in the Holy Quran. Mashqor: the basil, sacred to the ancients.

2-For Al-Mujahed
Let me just once
Travel in that distant sphere,
Let me silently roam
Over the white wake of the dead
Let me share your memory
With the Fresh Green Branch.
By those like you
Reality prevails
And the unbidden Night retreats,
The way of life is made home again.
After your death, my brother,
Taiz was bereaved, the blind sighed,
The dolls and the qat provided
Their usual comforts.
Who but you, could share
The rose-pain of your departure?
Who but you, could consider
The courtesies of universal literature,
This love-world we have drawn
With our youthful alphabets of fire?
Who will abide with Hamza*
In the great empty House?
You took such pains, a remembrance
For the years to come, the years.
The constellations won, in the end
Your dedication is theirs,
You devoted heart and mind
And struggled one man against the sons of Time.
Hamza, : The writer Al-Mujaheds young son.

3-Looking Upon Al-MuaLa
The light-mirrors on Mualas cheeks have pampered me,
Do you think the sea will appear and dance?
Or is she waiting for me first?
O Stream, this is the way
Over here, I have taken my last breath
I am ready, you are welcome to it all
These eyes have admired girls from afar
My heart runs with the swollen river
I am sundered in two like its banks.
It is true, I confess
My fondness for brunettes is well-known
By the girls of Tawahy*, who are less than faint
Let us embrace each other, then
For togetherness is the impossible aim,
One can take love the other, the dream.
Omima knew well, how dream loves to fight
With love, day and night!
Tawahy: reputedly the area of the loveliest girls in the Arabian Peninsula.

4-Rasha
I would be a faltering oasis, Rasha, content
To become your beach of dry grasses
The last thing your eyes see, in departure
Go! Take everything, leave me the scaly monster,
Every bristle stinging with desire.
Rasha, is it enough this man is astonished?
Or will my amazement only satisfy you?
Stone or glass, I am sunk and lost
Every door keeps some of you apart from me
Making me forget if I should push or pull it!

5-Out of Aden
Out of Aden, blue time issues forth like a ship
That has somehow learned to flaunt mountains
Or perhaps the mountains dispatched one of their kin
To seek such perfumes as the markets now manufacture.
Be blessed, my home, love and fascination
Are almost the same thing, the stout
And brave men of our history,
Will not let us go, their strength remains taut
In the angle of the prow, the cutting of the waters.
Be blessed, my home, love and fascination
Are almost the same thing, the stout
And brave men of our history,
Will not let us go, their strength remains taut
In the angle of the prow, the cutting of the waters.
How wide is this faith-path, this reckoning at dawn?
It is glory to be challenged, to face the storm
To keep the coastline perfectly intact and calm within
While dark waves rush at darker clouds, without

6-The Last Knights Phantom
Here rests my convoy, on this stony plain
We encountered the calamity, old memory
How the revolution came apart in the dark
Just as we were about to attack.
The air is thick with sweet bitterness like smoke
The years have lost their way to my heart
I hug my nostalgia, a childhood companion
Still boasting he once saw the last knight.
Why should I die of longing
When the white flag flies high
Over our friends and easy intimacies?
Let us burn what we have, recalling
The liquid Lyre and its ever-thirsty Player.

7-More Resemblant To the Shades
Verse is a more resemblant to the shades
When your spectrum glimpsed or appeared to me
And reveals in eyes of the flood my soul
Crowned with bracelets of the crescent
And in the bottom of myself visions get greened
And trails with sublimity palm of fantasy
And mix ignitions of green high lands
With pains of streams and the hills
Overwhelmed me the pleasure when early starts on
Persons of the love, stands before me
Seeing when I mention Prophet Mohammad
Yearning glows in all of the feelings
Smelling odor breezing from the letters
On embers dewed in my essay
Purifying heart as long as it to be
Beloved of Allah my business and concern
As long as I look at him, I'm fortunated
Secrets of the beauty and secrets of the love
As long as I submit him my devotion
I encircle every precious in whole of the life
Me O Mustafa, is a lover slave
Heading you, O Messenger in bad of the state
A pardon, O my Master to the inexperienced, is it there
And a refuge for the ideal heart?
Imagining the expressing spoiling my whole of flesh
If I retrieve the old passing days
And revise calamities and the pains
And 'icons' fantasy of the time
And sank in haze of a shyness
Struggling me reduction in reduction
O master I'm in any of circumstance
A refugee at door of you thence accept my convergence
In light of hands you've, I appeal my invocations
To 'The Gracious', how if you're the light
A leader to the guidance after the misleading
So grant me a blink of eye of love
Completeness I substantiate to one, that's of mine
- O Master you, the one I know for the forgiveness
And a deserver to mediate un punishment and the grant
A leader of demonstration on the Day of Judgment
Thence no nearness of vending nor else of any cost
For this I vowed the precious of my life
To your love, myself and my belongings
Hoping you'll stay with me in communication
If communication with the world is so interrupted
And bide O my God prayers on every blinking
Upon Taha and family, his ancestry, of all the best

8-Cooing to Forfeiture
You went away alone
Chewing on tidbits of the past
Sipping the clear wine of emigration
Not given to family or home
And turning your heart afresh.
Where are the masterpieces of our ecstasy?
You took nothing with you, eyes remote
You made me custodian of birds cooing
Forfeiting everything, to turn your heart afresh!

9-Winter and Compunction
To whom do we initially affiliate
With whom do we really associate
We are missing such a common aim
We adhere to nothing. What a shame
Completely adrift, were made for surrender
Made to bow low to a lower pretender
Yielding up every thing weve been given
Living with the long odds of being forgiven
Of no avail boastful of our past brave
Still cheering the one in the grave
Who could ever become greater
We marched with him as leader.
Feeling rather hanged for losing face
Consent whole to scandal and disgrace
That apparently came to our doors
With a mere scaring out of force
Holy precincts clearly violated
Arab dignity deeply insulted
They vanished like a mist
Not a nightmare or a jest
Shall we stand up afresh ?
Wrestle those now poised to tarnish
And confronting peril lain
Elimination negligence prove vain
Will spring come to us again
Will Arabness rid us of pain?
To protect dignity violated
To restore land invaded

10-Much Fie on Pain
In vain those words speak
shall long they pine and peak! ?
My calls have reached no world
This heart has grown but weak
Oh speak of moon, for thee I seek
O stars of noon, dust off thy reek
Stand by thee, get sight of light
Defame incult, discard that leek!
That fame had gone to drain
That dawn but shown in vain
They've come to fleer at thee
You've come to prove insane
As frail, those words and leaves
As souls, O slaves of thieves
Oh still you claim of sighs
But sip all night's grieves
How cruel you moan afraid
How large you brate in bed
As bird in cage you sing
What a shame to cry and shed
So loud the cries of pain
So much my land does gain
Does wait for a world of hope
But alas! Does wane and wane
Shall long we fly asleep? !
Admit all woes and weep
It was but some we've got
'As this you sow you reap'O thee insane, unite the brain
Do try to flee that cause of bane
Mortgage all hopes to dream's chief
Much fie on pain, much peace o rain!
For land does sing this song
Does ring it's dawn and bong
Till those unfair get low
Get down to cry for long
11-Reversion Tunes
Here rests my convoy
On pains and a calamity
Of remembrance
And dark revolutionary dreams
About to resolve to attacking
The whole world.
Why is the dream fractured
And the white flag lacks
A home and supporters!
Why should I die of longing
Though enough intimacys chaff
And friends? !
Here the lyre is playing
Its reversion thirsty tune
And none can hear such sweet
Chanting in my heart,
But you!
Here I shed another tear
Over this darkness embraces
Teeming with distress
To feel at ease about all



For his thirty-three years he seems to know much more about humans and human feelings. Expressed in his poetry lines he forcefully takes you through a world of emotions and wonders. The most amazing thing is that he writes poetry in both Arabic and English.
With his bachelor of English from Sanaa University and years of experience as an English language teacher, Mr. Al-Hakimi has mastered this foreign language and published more than 90 poems in both English and Arabic.
He was also chosen by Larry Frolick the Canadian author in his book Ten thousand scorpions in search of queen Shebas gold! as a face from the kingdom of Sheba'
By The Yemen Times Editor in Chief Nadia Al-Sakkaf