Live Encounters Arab Poetry & Writing April 2025
I Am Abundant in the Absence of My Loved Ones, poem by Ali Al-Hazmi.
Translated from Arabic by Dr. Salwa Gouda.
I Am Abundant in the Absence
of My Loved Ones
I am with myself
Nothing is missing—I say to my solitude—
For a beloved who left and did not fully heed the broken echo
In my final string, for a dove that flew far behind its desire
And left no trace of love’s shawl floating in the horizon of its near meaning
For a gazelle that leaped over the fence’s roses and did not heed
The lump of affection that quickly grew in the palms of the spring after her Departure.
I am with myself
A meager spark of the beginning was enough for me to see
From the height of my questioning, a certain path in the fog
Neither luck grants me an answer in its glance
Nor my long passion for truth can pierce the distant meaning
With a white rose in every season.
I am with myself
I step toward my wandering dream, led by the eye of emptiness
To the wilderness of my desire, clinging to the wing of a song from the past
I ascended to a glow in the galaxies of longing, illuminating me
So I remain bound to my fate with the endings, in the shawl of absence.
I am with myself
I am the pride of wandering in the desert
I open my soul’s arms in the open expanse to embrace those I love
My slender shadow dissipated in the echo over its wounds
And no throne of temptation shook in my blood
Neither the wind disrupts my first step
Nor do the “no’s” close their high door to my obsessions.
I am with myself
Nothing overwhelms me to feel, in its absence, the emotional void and its embers
Nothing from its past resides in me to know, without it
That life, like a shout, has scattered
And that my dream is no longer enough to create spring from its gardens
in the Mirage.
I am with myself
A metaphorical tree of yearning lulls my desire in the poem
To reconcile with the distant past and its people
They left me when the story exiled me into the depths of its silence
They passed through my night and did not cast peace upon my weariness
They drove the sheep of clouds from my dream to the desert
in the twilight of Barrenness
But they did not realize my exile far beyond meaning and beyond my wheat
When I turned to a morning of truth without them, I saw a sun of beginning
That will bloom from the hymns of absence.
I am with myself
And this memory, with all its soil, palm trees, air, and first sky, is with me
With me are the suns of my childhood, the shadows of our ancient sidra tree
The path of our old home, and the specter of those who passed by its edges
With me is my youth and my mother’s fear when I stepped far away,
bidding farewell
The girl of my dreams, who tattooed the heart of the gazelle with henna
in the heat of the day, is with me
With me, in all her presence, her perfumes, her audacity, and her lofty pride,
she is with me
With me are those whose hopes were shattered yesterday
Who walked long toward the sidra tree of their dawn, thirsty, and did not arrive.
My distant dream is with me, and the dream of my father and mother
And those whose smiles I inherited before the world’s wounds, are with me.
I am with myself
Two in meaning and in the mirror when we wake from two stolen dreams
We become one, fragmented within ourselves
Two united by an obscure bias for the resurrection of near resemblance
and its opposite
We met in the lament of the oratorio, silent, distracted, and dreaming
The violin began to free memory from the past and mend the patch of sorrow
That widened over our pupils
But there is something that provokes the flute of our desire to live together
And to be more for truth than a wandering impossibility between eyelids.
© Ali Al-Hazmi
Translated from Arabic by Dr Salwa Gouda. She 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.
Ali Al-Hazmi (born 1970) is a renowned Saudi poet who earned his bachelor’s degree in Arabic Language from Umm Al-Qura University in Mecca. His poetry has been widely published in Arab newspapers, magazines, and various specialized cultural periodicals. Al-Hazmi has actively contributed to the literary scene by participating in and enlivening numerous poetry evenings at local literary clubs, as well as at literary festivals and forums across several countries worldwide. He has authored nearly seven poetry collections, which have been translated into multiple languages, including French, English, Turkish, Romanian, German, and Spanish. Al-Hazmi’s literary excellence has been recognized with several prestigious national and international awards, including: Poetry Prize at the Uruguayan Poetry Festival (2015), The Grand International Prize at the International Poetry Nights Festival in Romania (2017), “Verbumlandi” International Poetry Prize in Italy (2017), “Best International Poet of 2018” award from the International Poetry Translation and Research Center (IPTRC) in China.