Live Encounters Arab Poetry & Writing 16th Anniversary Volume Five
November- December 2025
Baghdad, Gate of the Afterlife, poems by Zaki Al-Ali.
Translated from Arabic by Dr. Salwa Gouda.
Baghdad, Gate of the Afterlife
Glass wounds the sparrows
And the people of Baghdad insist on making doors from it, to laugh
When our foreheads collide with it
We, the villagers.
The girl I loved in my youth
Left with her family for Baghdad.
The old scar on my hand
Was also caused by a pink glass bottle
From the people of Baghdad.
Where is the wonder
In a door that does not conceal what’s behind it?
You bastards!
In the next poem I will gloat over them, saying:
Baghdad is the gate of the afterlife!
An Abused Childhood
Those who abused me as a child
I punched their names, letter by letter
Until the paper swelled!
Those who ran after me
In the marketplaces
I drew them with broken legs
On an old wall
And left their erasure to the rain.
The women who abandoned me
I wrote them into bad poems
That no one reads.
Those who left me
When I was young
Passed by me yesterday
In white shrouds
And an old piece of my heart.
Flight
My father
Wanted me to be a pilot
Because he failed to touch the sky
Due to his excess weight.
Abbas Ibn Firnas
Also failed
And was later accused of sorcery.
I, too,
Was rejected by the aviation academy
Because of my sinuses!
My heart
God placed it in a cage
With no door
So it cannot fly.
Later,
My father and Abbas flew to the afterlife
And left me
Waving my hand at flocks of birds
And drinking lots
Of Red Bull cans!
The Fog of Eternity
Fathers do not die
They go
To look for work
In another universe
Furnishing our house in the afterlife
And filling the silos with wheat.
The three
Who raised the sails
On their coffins, and sailed
In our village’s river yesterday
Disappeared
Into the fog of eternity
Like the magicians of myths.
Birthday
I have no objection
To more lamps
For I am brown
And you need a certain whiteness
In your life.
Reduce the candles by half
Let us make it harder for the wrinkles
And come, let’s take a picture
While we are laughing
To delude the grandchildren… that we are fine.