The Missing Verse (No. 35)
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.. .. .. ..
And I was following a cloud
“Your salvation path”; Mevlana told me
A cloud white with creased edges
Looks like a map of a country I remember not;
A cloud whose colour has changed
To a cloud of grey
“When a step a sin makes?” I asked Mevlana
“Obey you must, to question you sin!” he said
“A flock you are in God’s field of cactuses!” he said
Verbose did he speak but answer he did not
Repeated it so we to memory commit
He ordered us to dream for him
To bow when we harvest words
No sooner he rises than every dream we tell him
He inhales it into his chest as smoke
Breathes it out in us
He orders us
Then sleeps
We’re too bowed to remember upright
We forgot the sky look and colour
Rather all question words
The Missing Verse (No. 36)
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And a dove I was
Dreaming of being a descendant of hawks
I was terrified to eat flesh raw
I hovered still as if frightening preys
Never land with the cast of hawks
On tables of blood and game birds
Until my flesh has shriveled and thinned
Even feathers did not find a soft place to turn to!
Then
I erred when kinship I asked of predators
Here I languishly land
Upon a receding riverbank
I peer at a fish lost
Jumped ashore
I wrestled with my hunger
Whilst in water’s mirror I saw my beak
Turn into a nightingale’s beak
Then
Again, I erred when I kept Caesar company
In his whims
Until he died
I now a statue of marble stand
-Within the ruins of a palace-
Dirty dwelling in dust
Not only could I not fly
But not a gesture could I even make
The Missing Verse (No. 37)
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And weary in search of the name
Of a little blue bird
My gaze narrows at it
The bird vanished shortly before the end of the woods
Let my eyes climb the closest cloud.
I fancied the game of soaring high
Then the awe of Earth in miniature
I forgot the bird’s colour
That which up the cloud’s edge took me
Yellow it was methinks
Early anight I loitered
Wished a star I befriend
To reveal the secret of light to me
Sipping in its twinkle I ken not what
Of the cloud’s nectar
At dawn, I was awoken, rather scared awake
From the heart of a stinging light’s embrace
They said: Sun shows not mercy to those who leave Earth
Stealthily in his absence
I descended in shivers reeling laggingly
Born of the sky
Descending at the Northern Cardinal
Who now I realize his name and colour
Having sipped the nectar of the gods
Author’s
Bionote:
*Tarek
Eltayeb: Born to Sudanese parents in Cairo. He moved to Vienna in 1984. In addition to literary
writing, he teaches at three universities in Austria. Fifteen books in Arabic
have been published for him, so far. His books have been translated into
numerous European languages, including: German, French, English, Spanish,
Italian and other languages. Attained various major fellowships and awards:
Elias Cannetti Fellowship of the City of Vienna, 2005 and Grand Prize for
Poetry 2007 at the International Festival Curtea de Arges in Romania. Was
appointed Austrian Ambassador for the European Year of Intercultural Dialogue
(EYID), 2008. Received the Decoration of Honor for Services to the Republic of
Austria in literature and literary communication- domestically and
internationally, 2008. Received the “International Writing Program“(IWP)
Fellowship at the University of Iowa, and the “Between the Lines” (BLT)
Program, 2008. He moderated, with two fellows, two creative writing workshops
in 2009 and 2010. Participated twice as judge of fiction in the Tayeb Salih
International Award for Creative Writing, 2019 and 2020. His recent
publications in Arabic include: “You saw what you were not allowed to see”,
Cairo, 2025. “A Little God’s Play”, Tunisia, 2021. “Floating Naked”, Cairo,
2018 and “Flight 797 to Vienna”, Cairo 2014.