Thankful for the Theif
Poetry is emotion distilled through the pen of another, and this collection offered glimpses across the narrowing edge of what I can still understand outside everyday discourse. I especially liked the introduction to Nizar Qabbani. The facing translations do not reproduce the Arabic so much as open a particular door into it. That is enough to encounter lines worth keeping. One example, the image of happiness as a phantom that exists in anticipation and dulls once possessed: وما السعادة في الدنيا سوى شبح.
Even with fifteen-year-old, fading recognition of Arabic, I was surprised by how completely a poem can resonate in one language and flop in another. For my read, the English was necessary, but was the key rather than the room itself. “I want other fingers / to write another way” lands with a thud. أريد أصابع أخرى… لأكتب بطريقة أخرى lands in Arabic.
I want another mind, one correctly wired in Arabic to appreciate this beauty without mediation. I will settle for the glimpses. A translation may steal, but without it the door remains locked.
في كل ترجمةٍ خيانة