TRAVELING REVOLUTION — RASHID HUSSEIN

In his introduction to the volume where this poem is published, the Palestinian poet and critic Izzedine al-Manasrah writes that Rashid Hussein’s “angry poetry condemns the period of bourgeois Arab domination of the Palestine problem.” Below, a poem emblematic of Hussein’s condemnation, “Thawra ‘ala Safar.”

°°°° 

What is left of the revolutions?

What is left of my sweetest dreams ?

Besides ruins and banquets

and stars on the shoulders

of those who explain away our defeats!?

****

What’s left but an army of articles filling

the coffers of journalists?

And explanations justifying the crime?

What’s left but a singer weeping over Haifa and Jaffa?

And banks sweating dinars looted from Jerusalem?!

What’s left but starting the revolution anew?

What’s left but to kill the crime?

****

The revolution is born in two eyes without a nation

The revolution is born a peasant without land.

Now only the police have land

and on it they imprison us all.

The revolution is born when the illiterate

and the writer

and the blind know the truth.

After the revolution writing will be free

and truth will be free.  

****

So my friends

I’m tired of being drugged by the speeches of Arab Kings.

I’m tired of a god who lives in the Seven Heavens.

A god who only cares about

prohibiting pork and permitting gold.

****

I’m tired of this god

who sells heavens and virgins.

So condemn me to hell

and you’re condemned to collect the wood

to keep it burning.

****

So you Arabs

patience has become exhausting.  

I’m angry now

I’m angry

I’m still angry.  

The revolution desires anger.

****

Then what?

In front of all the priests,

a child gave birth.

They dragged her to the market were she remains

nothing but the butt of insults.  

So when I write a poem

I’m torn apart

and blood from my mother’s womb pours from my face

and my poetry goes mad

searching for the faces of traitors.

****

So I remain a peasant

and a poet.

Wherever I walk

you will see a revolutionary.

Translated into English by Esmat Elhalaby from the Arabic original in: Rashid Hussein, Ana al-Ard la tahrimni al-Matar (Beirut: Munazzamat al-Tahrir al-Filastiniyyah, 1976). Originally published in al-Adab v. 20 n. 3 (1972).