Hollow Trumpets Poem by Freeyad Ibrahim

Translated from Arabic

By Freeyad Ibrahim

They came amid the pitch darkness
Tumbling about like steers.
The disaster shook the walls.
They have pelt the heads
The gates fell
But is there a house over there..? !

Legions of hollow trumpets
Nobody hears
Who hears..? !

We bowed with our peeled heads
How could we ever raise them after the flood
But is there any head left to lift? !

Farewell
O cities! that the human bits adore
And the orphans` sighs won't ignore

Do rattle, O keys! Do clink
Into the padlocks spit, don't shrink.

Goodbye
O sun, O the registrar of fates,
On the foreheads the destiny with dates
We are going to leave, to go our way
On bare feet which went astray
With erased eradicated faces
A steely wind is on our traces
Into our heads it drills, the walnut penetrated
An ember takes us to the land we aspirated.


FRYAD HUGO