to Claudia
the poem is your double
that turns over
in your eyelids
hypnosis of your Kingdom
that has untied the cry
from its vital space
you are the very substance
that your poem devours
and it is difficult
to distinguish your traits
they take on the colours
of failing humanity
each time that internal
overflow takes over
you fade away the Earth
and create the invisible
whirlwind of the skin
the pain under your neck
is the mark of deserts
that carry your dismay
what a reversed sweetness
the song of the shores
that sparks the fire of your lip
which salts your sleep
love of love without eye
without memory just a flight
and the house of the air
your poem is also a breast
digging the abysms
like an unrevealed wedding
(Translated from French by the author & Saad Ghosn)
Egypt
We crossed the lock like passing from the last glow to the prayer of the waters. Flooded the adornment of equivocal gods. We entered the mystery without opening a door, sliding from above in the light passion like a bony peasant coated with twilight.
Such is the magnitude of the muezzins that the speech becomes indistinct and the resonance a flock of jacaranda trees. Involuntary mystique that throws its invisible creepers, the jump of the jump.
We don't know where we will be going anymore nor if the boat is not missing its course. To dock, to part, to join the happy screams of children on the shore or the bird’s eager to shred the Palm trees.
Mosques fell silent for the benefit of youth chanting their unconditional love of travel which fleets under their nose, but of which they distil the incomparable flux.
The travellers themselves catch the air of villages quickly forgotten, giving a sense to the journey. They will not emerge unscathed by the time, weakened by the echo of a love that they have not invoked. The present is stronger than their restraint. They dissolve particle by particle in the night. Will the night be an augur or yet a bat of indifference?
Egypt, my Egypt that I see again after 33 years of absence, with a foretaste of a Christ who has lost his cross and the arcane of his epic. Egypt! I have dreamt of neither your falcons nor your crocodiles, apart perhaps the one the chambermaid fashioned for us from the bedspread. In the mouth of a long peaceful crocodile the Guide du Routard.
Irony and tenderness! I am confusing my return to Egypt with that of Giuseppe Ungaretti on the cruise ship Esperia towards his native Alexandria in the 1930’s.
Egypt! may the magic still hold you as a talisman against this madness eroding your integrity, your dignity. Egypt, lover of this lunar song, insomniac, and of this dance free of any rules, simple gestures of peasants who devote their humble breath to the air, the water and the desert.
Egypt, whose real gods still burn in the frightened or cheerful eyes of a young café server, human mediator, too human, of a secret that it is time that I mute.
(Translated from French by the author & Saad Ghosn)
Gaza out of season
where the landless enclave comes from
from where appears the enclave without sky
where derives the enclave without water
on the very edge of the sea to nowhere
a hell that Dante could not describe
metal-ridden soil
epidemic air
deflagrated bodies
hospitals schools
and all buildings
fatal corrida
blood and dust
is it an infra-earth
we danced we loved there
but that is no longer
a land where neither honey nor thyme
nor sap ooze so what are we becoming
a new neighborhood ultra-secure
what are they doing with Gaza
free of parasites what country
what whisper just a province
so what against the shapeless mass
the techno empire navigates
by all winds
so what about this purifier
civilization against barbarism
so-called Palestine
banish erase
doom to nothing
electrocuted Gaza
desert
(Translated from French by the author)
Poetry
Poetry infiltrates the breath that ravages the night and creates whiteness until the dawn. She lights nuggets, almost drowning them into swamps, and giving them new life, in foreign hands, at the other end of the reef. She is brief and mute save to the thickness of a lip that bleeds the word.
Poetry spins upside down, imagining and receding precipices. Algae from carnal Asia. Ethiopian born to love. Sled in Lapland lifting the rustle of the forest.
Epic, she unrolls her shattering blades. She does not imitate the past; she upsets the deal. She is like a horde of cloistered people discovering the loss of space and the strength of playing it all in the dust and the wind. She infuses today's tale into the bustle and the short circuits.
Out of her crucible, thought struggles, floats, or dies. A half-visible ledger charts its furrow and scatters her in the desert overcrowded with dreams.
Poetry precedes the underlying path of steps. She suddenly screams her refusal to freeze the beauty!
Poetry does not tell stories.
(Translated from French by Saad Ghosn & the author)
Author’s Bionote:
*Michel Cassir: Born in 1952 in Alexandria, Egypt, with Lebanese background and French nationality, Michel Cassir is a rare case of a multilingual poet and intellectual, also an internationally known scientist in the field of renewable energies. His extensive creative poetic work explored a combination of French, Arab and Latin American cultures. He is marked by the surrealism adventure. He published more than 30 literary works (poetry and prose) and translated several books of poetry from Spanish into French. His work was published in anthologies and poetical reviews all over the world. He received the French literary award "Jasmine of Silver" in 2008 for his overall poetic work. He is director of the poetry collection “Levée d’Ancre” L’Harmattan Editor, since 2001, with 170 books published.
the poem is your double
that turns over
in your eyelids
hypnosis of your Kingdom
that has untied the cry
from its vital space
you are the very substance
that your poem devours
and it is difficult
to distinguish your traits
they take on the colours
of failing humanity
each time that internal
overflow takes over
you fade away the Earth
and create the invisible
whirlwind of the skin
the pain under your neck
is the mark of deserts
that carry your dismay
what a reversed sweetness
the song of the shores
that sparks the fire of your lip
which salts your sleep
love of love without eye
without memory just a flight
and the house of the air
your poem is also a breast
digging the abysms
like an unrevealed wedding
(Translated from French by the author & Saad Ghosn)
Egypt
We crossed the lock like passing from the last glow to the prayer of the waters. Flooded the adornment of equivocal gods. We entered the mystery without opening a door, sliding from above in the light passion like a bony peasant coated with twilight.
Such is the magnitude of the muezzins that the speech becomes indistinct and the resonance a flock of jacaranda trees. Involuntary mystique that throws its invisible creepers, the jump of the jump.
We don't know where we will be going anymore nor if the boat is not missing its course. To dock, to part, to join the happy screams of children on the shore or the bird’s eager to shred the Palm trees.
Mosques fell silent for the benefit of youth chanting their unconditional love of travel which fleets under their nose, but of which they distil the incomparable flux.
The travellers themselves catch the air of villages quickly forgotten, giving a sense to the journey. They will not emerge unscathed by the time, weakened by the echo of a love that they have not invoked. The present is stronger than their restraint. They dissolve particle by particle in the night. Will the night be an augur or yet a bat of indifference?
Egypt, my Egypt that I see again after 33 years of absence, with a foretaste of a Christ who has lost his cross and the arcane of his epic. Egypt! I have dreamt of neither your falcons nor your crocodiles, apart perhaps the one the chambermaid fashioned for us from the bedspread. In the mouth of a long peaceful crocodile the Guide du Routard.
Irony and tenderness! I am confusing my return to Egypt with that of Giuseppe Ungaretti on the cruise ship Esperia towards his native Alexandria in the 1930’s.
Egypt! may the magic still hold you as a talisman against this madness eroding your integrity, your dignity. Egypt, lover of this lunar song, insomniac, and of this dance free of any rules, simple gestures of peasants who devote their humble breath to the air, the water and the desert.
Egypt, whose real gods still burn in the frightened or cheerful eyes of a young café server, human mediator, too human, of a secret that it is time that I mute.
(Translated from French by the author & Saad Ghosn)
Gaza out of season
where the landless enclave comes from
from where appears the enclave without sky
where derives the enclave without water
on the very edge of the sea to nowhere
a hell that Dante could not describe
metal-ridden soil
epidemic air
deflagrated bodies
hospitals schools
and all buildings
fatal corrida
blood and dust
is it an infra-earth
we danced we loved there
but that is no longer
a land where neither honey nor thyme
nor sap ooze so what are we becoming
a new neighborhood ultra-secure
what are they doing with Gaza
free of parasites what country
what whisper just a province
so what against the shapeless mass
the techno empire navigates
by all winds
so what about this purifier
civilization against barbarism
so-called Palestine
banish erase
doom to nothing
electrocuted Gaza
desert
(Translated from French by the author)
Poetry
Poetry infiltrates the breath that ravages the night and creates whiteness until the dawn. She lights nuggets, almost drowning them into swamps, and giving them new life, in foreign hands, at the other end of the reef. She is brief and mute save to the thickness of a lip that bleeds the word.
Poetry spins upside down, imagining and receding precipices. Algae from carnal Asia. Ethiopian born to love. Sled in Lapland lifting the rustle of the forest.
Epic, she unrolls her shattering blades. She does not imitate the past; she upsets the deal. She is like a horde of cloistered people discovering the loss of space and the strength of playing it all in the dust and the wind. She infuses today's tale into the bustle and the short circuits.
Out of her crucible, thought struggles, floats, or dies. A half-visible ledger charts its furrow and scatters her in the desert overcrowded with dreams.
Poetry precedes the underlying path of steps. She suddenly screams her refusal to freeze the beauty!
Poetry does not tell stories.
(Translated from French by Saad Ghosn & the author)
Author’s Bionote:
*Michel Cassir: Born in 1952 in Alexandria, Egypt, with Lebanese background and French nationality, Michel Cassir is a rare case of a multilingual poet and intellectual, also an internationally known scientist in the field of renewable energies. His extensive creative poetic work explored a combination of French, Arab and Latin American cultures. He is marked by the surrealism adventure. He published more than 30 literary works (poetry and prose) and translated several books of poetry from Spanish into French. His work was published in anthologies and poetical reviews all over the world. He received the French literary award "Jasmine of Silver" in 2008 for his overall poetic work. He is director of the poetry collection “Levée d’Ancre” L’Harmattan Editor, since 2001, with 170 books published.