Wednesday Poetry: Nazik Malaika's ‘And We Still Have the Sea’
we stood by the sea in the midday heat, two excited kids / my spirit swimming through your fields
We are currently running a “buy a back issue” campaign to support ArabLit & ArabLit Quarterly, and this poem, by famed Iraqi poet Nazik al-Mala’ika,ran in the summer 2019 SEA issue of the magazine, available now at Gumroad, ArabLit.org/Shop, and elsewhere.
And We Still Have the Sea
By Nazik al-Mala’ika
Translated by Emily Drumsta
we stood by the sea in the midday heat, two excited kids
my spirit swimming through your fields
the flooded rivers of your eyes
my heart running after a question
whose buds perfume your lips
your question is a sweet north wind
your hands hide sweet songs by lovesick violins
your question shines sky-colored onto trellises and ponds
you asked about the sea, do its colors change?
are its waves different shades? do its shores shift?
you asked, with your eyes wide as dreams
your face a distant star
lost ships without a harbor
you asked, your lashes ears of wheat
a field that swells in waves, the wonder of a child
your hands the flowing sails
on two boats
driven out beyond the distance, beyond what we can see
and I said, yes,
my love
the sea changes colors
green ships surge across it
pale cities emerge from it
and sometimes it drinks the sunset’s blood
and sometimes it turns the color of sky
gathering its blue, my love
and dreaming, gazing with scattered
celestial eyes
into endlessness, turning the color of light
in the morning, dimming its chandelier at night
you asked about the sea, do its colors change?
are its waves different shades? do its shores shift?
yes, my love,
a sea laps at the edges of my soul’s ravine
passing through harbors of color and sun
and deserted fields
a moonlit twilight bathes in its waves
wetting its hair
laying out a path of reflection and sky, yes
my love, and it colors the gulfs
yes, the sea changes colors
drinking the yellow of my doubt and distrust
turning as blue as my melody
my songs and ships set sail on its scattered waves
it turns white, its seafloor jasmine-colored
it turns green, like the green of sad eyes
like the peridot waters of Nahavand
in the depths of my grief.
you asked about the sea, do its colors change?
your eyes are a sea, vast
shores lost
yes, my love, it changes and turns the color of ash
and tastes just like a sleepless night
all of its fish are ash, its pearls
ash
sponges
octopuses ash
domes of sunken cities ash, and the face of a drowned man
floating, pillowed on the salty waves, unconscious, is ash-colored
swallowing water, the salt nightshade and ash upon his lips
my ocean, your ocean, this ocean of ash
has a loving heart
and a harshness that slaps at the corpse, spreading out, pillow-soft
quarreling with the drowned gray body, my sea and your sea
sent its violent wave to strike him
and mermaids who bore him
to sands of forgetting like wine
he lies on the shore, senseless, inert
and the sea of ash
sprays his motionless form, and a wave of love
plays on his cheeks and washes his face till
it glistens with love and salt and foam
sometimes covering the body
sometimes returning, retreating, washing it
in eternal indifference
you who ask me:
does my sea and your sea change colors?
does it paint its shores in oils and coal like the clouds?
my love, when I was little my grandfather
was tall and long like hair braided in spring
he had depth
shadow
distance
and the violence of an autumn storm
he was wise as a magical, edgeless sea
and strong as a wave
one day tongues of flame came to our house
to gnaw at the walls and set curtains alight
the flames turned in circles
roaring on the balconies of our dreams, laughing at our terror
threatening to spread, running through our neighborhood
vowing to devour cheeks
lips
doors
and even the boys on the threshing-floors
my grandfather rushed at it, as rash as a wave
and with a cry of fright
fell upon it with a tornado’s violence, cursing and railing
his insults rain and longing, his ferocity a melodious line of verse,
a whispered prayer, a morning star
a perfumed boat
the abuse on his lips a colorful stream
and my grandfather put out the fire
saving my lashes and hair
my love—my grandfather was an ocean
changing colors, turning the quarries of his eyes black and green
changing waves, reaching into the distance, forming pearls
making springs flow, mooring on shores
creating space, sculpting islands
scattering golden islands across the gulf’s blue
and his buckets full of curses were vials of balm
breaking bracelets of fire from forearms and wrists
the strength of the waves in my sea and your sea
has been transformed into hands and a chest
that bear the body of the drowned man
and rain down kisses and love
and lay it gently on safety’s shores
with the fluttering wings of a dove
and give him new life
sow his death with dreams
and memory’s wheat
and the cold of a cloud
how can you ask me about color and the sea, my love,
when you are my sail
and the colors of my sea
and the dreaminess in my eyes
when you are the mist on my paths
my canvas
when you are the peaks of my waves
my sad rose, my pale perfume?
you ask me about color and the sea, my love
but you are my seas
my pearl and my shell
and your face is my home
so carry my boat on a wave of desire, hidden, enclosed
to a dark and impossible shore
with no flatlands, no hills
to a twilight with moonlit expanses
deep
colorless in the light of day
branchless in the forest’s thick
free of terror, free of hope
we’ll lose ourselves there
eating the warmth of winter, plucking the snow of spring
praising frost’s wool
where the shadows are shapeless
where fate has no ledger
and a glance raises nothing
but the wave of a song coming down
through the moon’s mountains
we laugh we cry your eyes
reflect the color of the sea
and we still have color
and the sea
eternity.The Iraqi poet Nazik al-Malaika was one of the most important Arab poets of the twentieth century. A pioneer of free verse poetry, over the course of a four-decade career, she would publish prolifically and carved out a space for herself between old and new, tradition and innovation, the time-honored and the iconoclastic.
Emily Drumsta is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Comparative Literature at Brown University. She was the recipient of a 2018 PEN/Heim Award for her translation, Revolt Against the Sun: The Selected Poetry of Nazik al-Mala’ikah, which appeared in 2021.
