{"id":9443,"date":"2012-12-15T12:33:38","date_gmt":"2012-12-15T16:33:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/?p=9443"},"modified":"2012-12-15T12:33:38","modified_gmt":"2012-12-15T16:33:38","slug":"nostalgia-my-enemy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/nostalgia-my-enemy\/","title":{"rendered":"Nostalgia, My Enemy"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Saadi Youssef, born in 1934 in Basra, Iraq, has lived in exile for some 30 years now \u2014 currently in London, England. Mahmood Darwish has called him a major influence, saying that “Saadi Youssef, whose poetry is in dialogue with the history of popetry, is like no other Arab poet… I was enchanted by his complex simplicity in its search for the poetics of minutiae in the prose of life and for the secret relationship between the quotidian and the historical.” Youssef has published over thirty books & is one of the outstanding poets of the Arab world. The present selection of poems \u2014 all written between 2002 & 2009, translated from Arabic by Sinan Antoon and Peter Money & published by Graywolf<\/a> \u2014 is an excellent way into his prolific late work. As Marilyn Hacker writes: “Saadi Youssef was born in Iraq, but he has become, through the vicissitudes of history and the cosmopolitan appetites of his mind, a poet, not only of the Arab world, but of the human universe.” Here is the title poem of the book:<\/p>\n

O Nostalgia: My Enemy
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

We’ve been at it for thirty years.
\nWe meet like two thieves on a journey
\nwhose details are not fully known.
\nWith every passing station
\nthe train cars decrease in number,
\nthe light grows dimmer.
\nBut your wooden seat, occupying all trains,
\nstill has its constants.
\nThe etchings of years\u2014
\nchalk drawings,
\ncameras no one remembers,
\nfaces
\nand trees that lie under dirt;
\nI took a look at you
\nfor a moment,
\nthen rushed panting to the last car
\nfar away from you.
\n\u2026
\nI said: the road is long.
\nI took out my bread and a piece of cheese from my sack.
\nI saw you eyeing me, this way
\nsharing my bread and cheese!
\nHow did you find me?
\nJump at me like a hawk?
\nListen:
\nI didn’t travel tens of thousands of miles,
\ndidn’t wander across many countries,
\ndidn’t know thousands of branches
\nso that you could come now, steal my treasure,
\nand corner me.
\nNow leave your seat and get off the train,
\nmy train will speed past this station
\n\u2014 so get off,
\nand let me go
\nwhere no train will ever stop.<\/p>\n

11\/12\/2003<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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