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Nizar Qibbani

Url:	http://blog.myspace.com/lelynonline
Author(s):	Pending confirmation. Help us confirm the author.
Language:	English
Tags:	Poetry, Arab, Love
Description:	Nizar Qabbani was a Syrian poet born in 1923, and died in 1998. When he was 15 his sister, then 25, committed suicide because she could not marry the man she loved. Hence his famous saying: "Love in the Arab world is like a prisoner, and I want to set (it) free." His second wife was killed in a guerrilla attack on the Iraqi embassy in Lebanon in 1982 during their civil war. Politics and sex become the same thing, and the prison containing love becomes a killing field for human rights. In his "Ode to The Queen of Sheba" we see all of these themes, as dashed love is twined together with a deep feeling of loss of Arab glory and unity. This poem is still studied in High Schools all over the Middle East, an expression of the frustrations of an entire people. When Qabbani died, his funeral was followed on the radio by the entire Arab speaking world. Ode to The Queen of Sheba Thank you Thank all of you For my lover is dead because of you You drink from a cup of martyr's tombs And my poem is murdered Is their a nation on earth aside from us, who murders poems? Queen of Sheba The most beautiful Queen in the history of Babylon Sheba The tallest date tree in all of Iraq She walked in the company of peacocks and gazelles followed her footsteps oh pain of poetry when your fingertips touch her I wonder who, after your poetry will raise the grains of wheat? Nineveh the green Blonde gypsy woman Waves of the Euphrates which she wears in spring the most beautiful of bracelets has killed you Sheba What Arabic country as this one kills the song of the nightingale? Where is the question of Mahilhil? Where the first noblemen? the tribes have eaten the tribes and wolves have killed the wolves spiders have killed the spiders I swear upon your eyes which encompass a million stars I will pronounce, oh my moon, that the Arabs are estranged For is the champion an Arab liar? Or is history, like us, a liar? Sheba Don't leave me For after you the sun will only illuminate the shore I tell you truely that the theif has taken the raiment of the murderer and I tell you truely that the brilliant leader is rhetorical I tell you: that the story of sunrays is the silliest of all For we are one tribe amongst many This is history, Sheba How are humans separated into gardens and trash heaps? Sheba... Martyrs! Poems! The purest virgin! Sabaa has lost it's Queen! And the crowd cheered. The greatest of Queens The woman who embodied all the glories of Sumeria Sheba My sweet bird My richest icon Tears spread out on the face of Mary Magdeleine
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