Live Encounters Arab Poetry & Writing July 2026
Sea Messages, poems by Atef Abdel-aziz.
Translated from Arabic by Dr. Salwa Gouda.
Sea Messages
You hold a fishing rod, from whose end a short line dangles.
I hold a wide-meshed net.
Your catch today: two handfuls of clams and cockles, with a worn plastic bracelet thrown in, who knows? perhaps it belonged to a girl who lost her way to your
secret hollow.
As for my haul, it was nothing more than a tangle of salty weeds.
You cast your rod, then listen to the sea’s messages, that’s how someone like you gets to set flirtation aside, and nonsense aside.
I cast my nets, then take a nap that carries me back to a past that’s become nothing but an empty gap.
Your spirit is trained to test the noise that rises at the edge of joys: joys just before they fade.
But my hand is friends with damp sand and the brittle husks of cups.
You nod toward the houses, and they bow before you, lowering their walls to your whisper.
I walk toward the city, the city walks toward itself and moves away.
You love arugula, you hate your heart.
I love your arugula and your heart, I hate my own.
Those Voices
This hum is from yesterday’s rain.
I’m certain that the voices in our town have started to stammer
in their places
otherwise, how could I possibly answer
a question
that was asked before I arrived?
Or keep promises made in my absence?
It’s even become routine
for so many cryptic phrases
to pile up in my ears
phrases I keep struggling to sort out
and return to their owners.
The real problem now might be in my heart
this heart that, under all that chaos,
keeps getting tangled in longings that aren’t its own,
or preoccupied with other people’s grains of love.
In a city like ours
so strange in its moods
and under rain that’s still falling in the past,
it was written that I’d become someone other than myself.
Or maybe I’m many others, taking turns inside me.
I am so many now
with only one heart.
© Atef Abdel-aziz
Salwa Gouda is 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. Furthermore, 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, philosophers, historians, and men of letters, under the supervision of UNESCO. Also, her translated poetry anthology, entitled Dogs Pass Through My Fingers, was published recently through Alien Buddha Press in Arizona, USA. Additionally, her literary translations have been published in various international magazines.
Atef Abdel-aziz is an Egyptian poet and critic who published 12 poetry collections in addition to a critical book. His poems have been translated into several languages including English, French, Spanish, Kurdish and Persian. Furthermore, he participated in many international conferences and festivals in Iraq, Syria, Morocco, Kurdistan and others and has received many local and international honors and awards.