Live Encounters Arab Poetry & Writing 16th Anniversary Volume Five
November- December 2025
Rain Poems, poems by Adnan Al-Sayegh.
Translated from Arabic by Dr. Salwa Gouda.
Rain Poems
The rain licks
Your body
Ah
How can the lover not be jealous?
Before the mirror
The rain
Was falling on the window
And I was gathering the ends of the braid
From the comb’s tears.
The girls
Carry umbrellas
For fear of getting wet
So
The rain gets upset
And leaves.
Who will wash the rain’s lapis lazuli clothes
If they get dirty with the city’s dust?
And where will it sleep if the clouds depart
And leave it alone, clinging
To the glass of closed windows?
And when it thinks of keeping a woman company
Who will roam the streets with it
And endure its lightning and thunder?
Resting his cheek on his hand
He thinks of the rain’s exile.
O Rain,
Stay mischievous in the streets
Like cats and children
Stay gleaming on the glass
flowing like drops of light
And don’t enter the shops
In the coats of the rich
Lest your two white hands be stained
With money.
The rain is white
And so are my dreams
I wonder, will the streets tell them apart?
The rain is sad
And so is my heart
I wonder which is more pained
When the feet of passersby crush them?
O Rain,
O messages from the sky to the meadows
Teach me how the flower of a poem blossoms
From the stone of speech.
When the rain dies
The fields will alone mourn its funeral
Only the prickly pear shrub
Will laugh in the wilderness
Gloating over the weeping of the trees.
The rain crosses the bridge
The cattle cross the bridge
The clouds cross the bridge
The buses cross the bridge
O Bridge, my heart
Why do you remain split over the river
And not cross to the other bank?
O Rain
– my foolish friend –
Beware of loitering on the sidewalks of canned cities
You will inevitably be scattered – like me –
Drop by drop
And dry up on the asphalt
No one will remember you here
Only the distant fields
Will weep for you.
Poems of Departure
Black wolves
Climb my memory
Gnaw at the corpses of forgotten days
In the forbidden land
And leave me
– every evening –
Howling.
Alone
On the snow of my pages
In the exiles of the world
*
I look at the pictures of friends
In the album of war
And count: how many bottles
Have I poured – here, on my table –
Over the pits of their graves
Which were leveled in haste.
*
Oh, my longing
Whenever I think of traveling
Two dew-sprinkled children leap from my eyes,
With carnations and questions
And a homeland, bristling with guards
And a woman, who doesn’t know
How to manage the house’s water trough.
Whenever I think of exile
My tears precede me to the homeland
*
Half of you: a homeland lost in bars
And the other half: prepares his bags for travel
Your two halves meet, like two hands in an idle clock
And part, like two strangers on the sour sidewalks of exile
While you are nailed to the window
Possessing nothing but your passport, shelved
On the shelf
Where female spiders turn white.
© Adnan Al-Sayegh
Adnan Al Sayegh is an Iraqi poet residing in London, he is the author of 13 critically acclaimed poetry collections. His distinguished works, such as “The Uruk Anthem” and “The Dice of the Text,” explore the intersections of ancient Iraqi identity and contemporary diasporic experience. The international resonance of his writing is evidenced by its translation into a wide array of languages.
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.