Hey Buffoon!
- Hey, buffoon!
- Hold on tight
- watch out not to fall
- torment the heedless folks
- and bend your ears low
- safe-guard against foe
- fear not to gaze in earnest
- your royal shadow below
- and if the leaves rustle,
- depart and withdraw
- as walking maybe dangerous
- Ye buffoon.
- Blast your fire on everything on unconsented breeze
- on every word if uttered without a pass
- train the sparrows to write
- apparatus reports,
- the village lanterns,
- the towns' windows,
- every stalk of Durra has to learn
- let ants become informants
- the dribble learn to scribble
- their daily spying diary
- Or, better still, keep most
- people bottled up in glass
- Put focus on the hungry
- sink all the bloody toilers
- down the seventh earth!
- bombard them really hard!
- expropriate the stars from the dark of night
- the ebbing of tide from the sea
- cancel with no excuse the face of the rising day
- clip the wings of winds
- freeze the veins of life
- and invalidate the Hope
- call off the taming of fire and the division of labor
- then maybe you will find a refuge to savor
- Oh, Buffoon!
- Buffoon...
- From Mahjoub Sherif's poem Ya Bahlawi on shah Iran.
- The arabic text is here.
Mahjoub Sharif, Martin Luther King, Pussy Riot (Russian pop group), an artist from Tibet,
Snowden (SNA contractor, WikiLeaks) are among twelve prisoners of conscience to be saluted by Chinese artist Ai Wei Wei, himself barred from leaving China. The exhibition is set to take place in former Alcatraz prison, off San Francisco where each of the honored will be allocated a prison cell, one too many for Mahjoub Sharif who died this year! The ferry to reach 'Alcatraz' the prison-turned-into-museum will be $30.
Alcatraz prison, probably the harshest of all prisons worldwide, is known as a setting for many
movies, including Escape From Alcatraz, a Clint Eastwood movie. For more on this, visit this
site: The Toronto Star
The video below was my contribution to a group of Sudanese who celebrated Sharif's
anniversary in September 2014 in Iowa City. It is a poem in Arabic which I will soon add
English subtitles to.
Snowden (SNA contractor, WikiLeaks) are among twelve prisoners of conscience to be saluted by Chinese artist Ai Wei Wei, himself barred from leaving China. The exhibition is set to take place in former Alcatraz prison, off San Francisco where each of the honored will be allocated a prison cell, one too many for Mahjoub Sharif who died this year! The ferry to reach 'Alcatraz' the prison-turned-into-museum will be $30.
Alcatraz prison, probably the harshest of all prisons worldwide, is known as a setting for many
movies, including Escape From Alcatraz, a Clint Eastwood movie. For more on this, visit this
site: The Toronto Star
The video below was my contribution to a group of Sudanese who celebrated Sharif's
anniversary in September 2014 in Iowa City. It is a poem in Arabic which I will soon add
English subtitles to.
God have mercy on Father Mahjoub Sharif.. Thanks, Mustafa Mudathir.
ReplyDeleteMy apologies. I failed to find the name of the person who translated this poem by the late poet Mahjoub Sharif 'Hey Buffoon'. It wasn't me of course.
ReplyDelete