BASSEM AL MERAIBY
THE MOUTH OF EVERY BEAUTIFUL
WOMAN OWES ME A KISS
The mouth of every beautiful woman owes me kiss
And I have to touch each name painted
With the blue of feminity
I have to guess the sleeping music of the tender letters
I am the peasant of dew on the mirrors of roses
With a heart as awake as a the heart of a rooster
I sing your name in the dawn of all languages
Translation by Nicolás Suescún
BASSEM AL MERAIBY Was born in Iraq. He studied acting and theater direction in Academy of Fine Arts in Baghdad. He has published nine collections of poems and his first, “al-Atil an alwardah”. (Unemployed of flower) was published in 1988 in London. He won the Yusuf Al Khal Prize for Poetry for it. He is interested in Latin America, politically and culturally and wrote more than an article in this subject as “ Latin American is a Panorama of imagination and blood”. He works in the Cultural press. He wrote political, cultural essays and plays. He is the editor responsible for the magazine poetic "Malamih". His poems translated into several languages such as English, Swedish, Persian, Polish, German and other languages. He lives in Sweden. Collections of poems: Unemployed of flower 1988; Words then words, 1997; The earth image, 1997; The bitter land, 1998; Sky with only one bird, 1999; More than a trace, 2003; Bloodcracy, 2004; Shadows and Masks, 2007; No place for us, 2008; Festival, Poems for children, 1986; Moon, sun, stars, Poems for children, 1989. Other works: The Pain bank, articles cultural and political, 2004; Poetry as light and mist, opinions about the poetry and poets, 2008. Is the poem the poet's question or his answer? “Is the poem the poet's answer to the questions of existence?... or is it his great question that he throws stright to the lifes face? // Every poem is a question and answer / Every poem in its deepest sense is like the stars hesitation about their eternal, mysterious existence. // I remember these questions from a previous poem // After every poem / A mysterious woman asks me: / Who are you / who are you// after every poem / I ask myself or I answer it // Who am I / Who am I // But that the poet knows certainly is the danger of his choice towards a world becames increasingly ferocious, then the poem is naked in front of all the arsenals of terror, debasement and weapons. To the extent that the question looks quite turbulent, but at the same time it points to enormous force which the poem includes or / indeed the force of faith, when it becames the other face of the dream. / The dream about a world there the evil is obstructed and this represents the great poem of humanity. There is nothing more powerful than this faith or betting , betting on a poem which can always dream even in a world expands and grows such as a forest after a forest of weapons and not trees. / In the midst of the poisonous delirium which surrounds the organism from all direction the poem is still the clearest language... the language that belongs to a soul that is not reconciled with a world which tends to destruction.// The poem is the silence which is after the language and the language which is valid after the silence.
