Live Encounters Arab Women Poets & Writers April 2024.
Possibilities, poem by Rim Gomri.
Translated from Arabic by Dr. Salwa Gouda.
Possibilities
The possibilities are many
It’s like witnessing the sunrise from an ancient roof
You get the ecstasy of creation
Or survive a traffic accident
While you are writing a love letter to a distant lover.
Perhaps you get a passing love stroke
You enter unwillingly the cities of poetry
You become the pivotal line
In a forgotten poetry collection on a shelf.
You may drink wine behind a window
In a city under bombardment
And you smile
Death has not noticed your presence yet.
There are many possibilities in life
As if light seeps into your soul at dawn
The sun shines on your lips
You extend your tongue to this existence
Happy with your victory over the darkness of your heart.
It may happen while you kiss her
To live the dream
Mock your naivety
Go on chasing longing.
Life has sad possibilities
A white cloudy morning
Becomes saturated blue
With the salt of distant seas
So, your soul longs for rain.
Poetic possibilities
You write a hot love poem
As brown as your coffee cup
You forget to borrow your lover’s face
And the meaning does not complete.
In life, the possibility of death
Destroys what came before it… It destroys what comes after it
The poet is miserable
The lover wails at its doorstep
The dream door closes when it passes
And nothing remains
Except the possibility of crossing the last dream.
© Rim Gomri
Rim Gomri is a Tunisian poet, storyteller, writer, and journalist. She studied journalism and the media. She has published three collections of poetry: Women Waiting, in 2013, On My Body, I Tattooed My Amulet, in 2016, What the Dream Did Not Say, in 2018, and Another Life for a Past Age, in 2021. Furthermore, she has a series of short stories and a novel in progress, as well as a fourth poetry collection in print, to be published soon. She writes literary and cultural articles in Tunisian and Arab periodicals.
Translation by Dr. Salwa Gouda, an Egyptian literary translator, critic, and academic at the English Language and Literature Department at Ain-Shams University. She holds a PhD in English literature and criticism. She received her education at Ain-Shams University and California State University in San Bernardino. She has published several academic books, including “Lectures in English Poetry, and “Introduction to Modern Literary Criticism” and others. She has also contributed to the translation of “The Arab Encyclopedia for Pioneers,” which includes poets and their poetry, philosophers, historians, and men of letters, under the supervision of UNESCO. Additionally, her poetry translations have been published in various international magazines.