Mohammad Helmi Al-Rishah är en poet och översättare från Palestina. Följande är lite om hans poesi på engelska:

It comes to me as if it were the
First One

By:
Mohammad Helmi Al-Rishah



How can the one who painfully jumps in the garden of the fire describe his long abode in it? Composing poetry, with the brevity of this hot theatrical scene of worried actor, is the sun of the question and the shadow of its answer!


(1)

From the aperture of the soul, I breathe out weak air loaded with fake coldness on my fingers that out of the blue scribbled the above lines (Ogarit). I wonder: is one kiss that stamped lips on the hot surface of my vision enough? I justifiably reply: I am now in a case of hesitant poetic innovation, and I can’t stay in its bed which is longing for other kisses. This is the worry of presence expressed by Abu Al-Tayeb Al-Mutansbi’s (a famous Arab poet) verse that my put off the climax of the poet’s lust, and hence expose his intentions and unveil his secrets.
No problem, I will endeavor to respond to its appeal, and it has to excuse me if I lose balance in the presence of its marvelous desire.


(2)

One day, I read Paul Valery’s, the French poet, saying: “The first verse is a gift from Heaven”. I have for long deliberated the saying like an explorer who marveled at his discovery. I then started to rephrase it: a tiny rainy cloud, a sea gull with warm features, a rose from a lover’s hand soaked in its fragrance, a cold star dragging its tale like a delicious bride. Since then, I have stuffed my pockets and imagination with its incomplete gifts whenever it offers me one. In vain, have I been trying to complete what is missing, though I know it will never be completed. The poem becomes complete when something is missing. Completeness of a poem, I daresay, is no more than the poet’s feeling that the bleeding of some virgin experience has come to an end.


(3)

What arouses the dancing ecstasy of my worried self and alleviates part of the burden of this blank verse which is kike atoning some sins that I have not committed is what (Ogarit) requested one day.
Using the pronoun (he), the poet, in me, one day dwelled on transforming its innovative gift into a poem elaborating on the exhausting process of its composition. When I remembered the poem, I gripped it strongly as if it were contract intended to alleviate me of the task of writing it, a process that entails staying for long in the garden of fire.

The Poet:
He poured some words

He set out writing and leaned on whiteness,
Exhaustedly, he poured some words,
He didn't say all he could,
Had his sailing boat been tighter
He could walk on water,
Unembarrassed, he could dream,
To end up in infinity.
This is the poem,
Clouds of paper in the sty of sin,
Swimming blow the space,
What pulled lungs apart,
Like two scaffold burning coals,
Pushed words out of them remain invisible,
It is still groping for desire in whiteness,
To pull them up from the armpit,
Before the mud spreads in the new images.


(4)

Who can disassemble the compound pictures of residence after making a painstaking effort to get out of its ghost-like gate after recovering from a short coma? What sort of my memory can peal off the fruit of that coma perfectly? All that I remember is that at the outset of poetic pregnancy and before delivery – writing, I have a craving which strongly and sometimes negatively affects my behavior towards the beloved ones living around me especially during the confusing and chaotic hours of the day. I became strange; something tries to explode my serenity as if the gift were a timed bomb. My repentance would be overwhelming if I failed to embrace it as if were a wild bird. Being busy in my routine life, I have failed to embrace so many birds that appear momentarily, for the chase through diverse climates will be long. Be a poet and catch me! This is what innovation dictates at the beginning. Breathlessly, I continue chasing the poem. It does not get tired, nor does it easily give in, albeit desiring its poet. Meanwhile, I lose a lot of my desire especially if the chase is fruitless because the hunt will be crude or premature. Consequently, the poet’s exposure will be widespread.


(5)

I know that no poem comes smoothly to the poet’s paper bed. But what is more important lies in the ability to conduct with it an educated, patient conversation. When true connection takes place, poetic inspiration begins, which is the boundary between the poem and its absent presence. Catching the poem is much more difficult than traveling inside a woman who not yet knows her first experience in a trembling bed.

The Poem:
It comes to him as if it were the first

When he finished with that innocent face,
The smoke,
The stretching of the lean body,
The yawning of all joints and senses
He closed an eye,
With another he realized
When unconscious he is riper than luscious fruit,
Worry looks at the spot of color,
The story in its wilderness, the range,
It is waiting for the echo,
It is either like this or that,
It comes to him as if it were the first,
He peppers his questions from the aperture of his madness,
Is that really the poem?


(6)

Keep a sting between you and the poem. Wisdom has taught me this: when it pulls the string, I loosen it to check its sincerity. The reverse is true, when I pull; it loosens, for it will not be ready to shine.
Now I remember an interesting situation that occurred between us when I was composing my collection, (The Vocative’s Book). I pulled it strongly testing its resistance and desiring its departure. It did the same. Then, I decided to let the string go, for it started first. I fell on my back and my legs were upwards. We both burst into laughter. I laughed out of regret, whereas it did to prove its power of predication.

She:
The spring of her lust for the evening tea

She throws on him the spring of her lust for the evening tea,
As a lazy magician, he recites the battles of his gypsy day,
In his wandering, he forgets the pot on the hot touch,
And sets deeds out of their sleep, and the horses of his distant picnic.
As a poet, in a spontaneous dance round his orbit,
He sips the steam off the painting and her cup,
She could see her lonely features.


(7)

Once s/he asked me: why I write?
I often asked myself: what I write for?
I reiterated the question many times before the poetic vein became dry. I got tired of the question.
The poem comes out of the rough softness of joy and the intimate touch of anxiety. The joy of a woman about her newly-born baby and her concern about it. This is why I abhor the midwife who tries to convince us she is the cause of everything. But, what actually happens? Why do we insist on the poem’s flowing though we are certain we are like the one who keeps plowing the sea thinking that the fish seeds are in his lust makes him think they will yield his own narcissist?
Is not constant writing like the perpetual act of raping a whore who afterwards decides to keep the baby to enjoy motherhood? Thus, after the swelling of the belly and inability to practice her job, she defends her exhausted clothes until she delivers hoping that the father whom she does not know well is convinced of the legitimacy of his project after strenuous efforts.
So, I write:
- I cannot argue others without writing, which is the sword of my bravery and the grassroots of my questions.
- I cannot tolerate seeing the flowers of our life living alone on a ruined nest. So, I have to shout: enough! Enough! Till when?, to show the ugliness of the scene.
- When I try not to write, the poem hits me with its tender toughness on my hand, blaming me an ordinary human creature after it has striped me from my specialty and uniqueness.
- I write to remove the gap between me and myself.
- I firmly believe that a person has to resist his mortality by leaving something which survives after him.
Now, I feel I have not said everything, exactly as I feel I have not said anything!
Why?
Like those who confidently live in the garden of fire, I know the answer. But, be sure, dear reader, that this is neither curtsey nor excessive narcissism on my part.




Translated by:
Dr. Abdul-Fattah Jabr



“Mohammad Himi Al-Risha speaks of each word as if it were the first one. The innovation to write is like (chasing the poem), and becomes (dancing ecstasy of my worried self). He describes this ecstasy as the (rough softness of joy and the intimate touch of anxiety, and means each word) each sound resonant against others, to leave the reader perpetually changed”.

Thomas Thompson*
From the introduction of:
INNOVATION PALESTINIAN LITERAURE
Testimonies of Palestinian Poet and Writers

* Former professor of American Lit.