Live Encounters Arab Women Poets & Writers June 2025
To Roland Barthes, poems by Rasha Ahmed.
Translated from Arabic by Dr. Salwa Gouda.
To Roland Barthes
Forgive me—
the hour has grown late.
Does love arrive late?
I will answer you:
It arrives late,
always.
Barthes,
I know him.
I met him once by chance,
my lover and I,
in an old tavern
by the sea.
He proposed to us
twenty entrances to love.
We didn’t believe him.
Why did you stammer
as you unraveled the story’s dust?
What a fool you are!
A lover does not complain of love,
but when the rain grows heavy,
the doorknob slips from their grasp.
Barthes,
my lover repeats
that he never wore masks,
that meanings never betrayed him,
nor description,
nor the snares of glances.
Only—
he was very lazy.
Each time he neared our shadows—
Barthes,
do you love Umm Kulthum?
Did she light your night with sighs?
Did she toss her handkerchief
into the pleasure of the text?
Tonight, I will celebrate you.
I will pluck the world from your chest,
and my lover and I will laugh
as he leans on my shoulder.
Just leave
your masks at the door,
so I may arrange the story well,
like bread upon my head:
the birds eat from it,
and I starve.
Then my sighs descend from the sky.
My burning in him was an ache—
nothing but an idea
that visited me,
like the unconscious
that precedes the shadow.
When he says I love you,
have you tried to outrun them both at once?
Has a kiss ever stung you
from parched lips
without the panting of longing?
The signs
my lover inscribed on my body—
I follow them like a teenager
in love with a lighthouse keeper,
who delights in life at night
while misleading every ship
until they burn on my shore.
What I Usually Do
What I usually do
is try to catch your name
as it slips from my mouth,
its wings fluttering in the room
like my fists in the air.
What I usually do:
open the suitcase of illusion,
cast a glance at life—
its glimmer comes fleeting,
then enters the illusion.
After that, I do nothing important,
only… smile at the truth
with much sorrow.
Thus Spoke the Poetess
This is how I managed
to make you believe I am a poetess.
I always sit in the back row,
lean on the margins,
and leave a transparent barrier
between you and me,
so you think I am drowning
in the fog of metaphor.
So, you believe the cold
in my eyes is grief!
That the indifference
in my voice is an old wound or fracture!
That the echo of emptiness inside me
is the chime of laughter!
This way,
I wrap myself in darkness
so you won’t see the shattered mirrors on my face,
so you won’t notice the howling inside me,
so you won’t realize I’ve lived a life without a shadow.
This is exactly how I deceived you.
© Rasha Ahmed
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.
Rasha Ahmed is an acclaimed Egyptian poet and cultural editor whose evocative verse explores themes of absence, longing, and the quiet fractures of the everyday. Her published collections—marked by lyrical precision and emotional depth—include The Boredom of Losses, It Was Nothing but the Water of My Heart, With a Pale Light, and An Empty Seat Weary by the Light. Through sparse yet resonant imagery, Ahmed’s work traces the edges of memory and desire, often blurring the line between personal lament and collective melancholy. Her voice, both intimate and expansive, has solidified her place among contemporary Arabic poets who redefine silence as its own language.