Live Encounters Arab Poetry & Writing 16th Anniversary Volume Five
November- December 2025
Come, poems by Mohammed Al-Kafrawy.
Translated from Arabic by Dr. Salwa Gouda.
Come
Tuck my arm under yours and let’s go have fun together
Pinch the little girl’s ear until she giggles with laughter
Bottle intimate details in colored vessels
And gift them to the elderly whose limbs have frozen from excessive wandering
Cross roads searching for lost footsteps
Spinning them into a precious sock for the cheerful girl and the mischievous boy
Inspect distant shores
Return the lost sea-turtle to the embrace of her old mother
Scatter sand in the air
To plant a new galaxy in the body of emptiness.
Come, O poetry
Set up cheerful traps to catch time, then use it to wipe the room’s tiles
Come and don’t be afraid
Everything is prepared for our arrival
Just you and me
Perhaps the world will come later
I know it follows us with the steps of a miserable old man
Wishing to join our play
Pulling stuffed buffoons from his pouch
To convince us he’s witty
He distributes pieces of plastic candy
Stamped with his rigid seal.
Come, O poetry
Shed your miserable memories and the delusion of isolation,
and shake yourself off
You, I and the world—we will have much fun
That slips into souls with gentleness and passion
Tickle them with our milky teeth
Call out the shadows that have left their owners
Gathering them one by one
Form an army of fantasies covering the earth and dazzling eyes.
Come, my brother, and don’t be shy
The sky is perfectly clean
For you, I swept it with my own hands of clouds and stars
The sun and moon have withdrawn to the side
The earth has shed its arrogance
Everyone is waiting for you to rearrange the scene.
Life
I waited long, and nothing happened
I traced the trail of neglected senses
I counted the hiding places of desires, to no avail
It seems it is truly somewhere else.
I know how mean it is
She dodges those who seek it
While throwing its supple body under the feet of ascetics.
Perhaps it’s my fault.
I saw it many times before and ignored it
Yes… it appeared in depraved images
But it never denied itself.
I saw it in the gaze of a stray dog
Begging a camphor tree for warmth in the public garden
In the uniforms of innocent soldiers
Who know not the reason for the war
In the overwhelming beauty of a forty-year-old widow
I saw it in the blood that gushed profusely
From the amputated foot of my friend
In a loud scream uttered by the gangrenous prisoner.
I saw her dance
Strip naked
Scream
Laugh
Plead
Sleep with the innocence of a child
Do the impossible yet not touch me.
© Mohammed Al-Kafrawy
Egyptian poet Mohammed Al-Kafrawy (b. 1978) has contributed to cultural journalism and literary criticism since 1998. His published poetry collections include A Pink Dream that Raises the Head (2006), Shortly After the Dead (2018), and A Suspicious Place (2020), with a fourth collection, Scraping Nothingness with his Nails and Giggling (2024).
Dr Salwa Gouda is an accomplished Egyptian literary translator, critic, and academic affiliated with the English Language and Literature Department at Ain Shams University. Holding a PhD in English literature and criticism, Dr. Gouda pursued her education at both Ain Shams University and California State University, San Bernardino. She has authored several academic works, including Lectures in English Poetry and Introduction to Modern Literary Criticism, among others. Dr. Gouda also played a significant role in translating The Arab Encyclopedia for Pioneers, a comprehensive project featuring poets, philosophers, historians, and literary figures, conducted under the auspices of UNESCO. Recently, her poetry translations have been featured in a poetry anthology published by Alien Buddha Press in Arizona, USA. Her work has also appeared in numerous international literary magazines, further solidifying her contributions to the field of literary translation and criticism.