Poems: Tarek Eltayeb (from: A Large Blot on the White Page)

Poverty’s Terror

They gave him a hoe,
planting him among African women farmers,
portraying him as if he were a harvest deity.
He smiled, having no idea
what a palm tree was.

He held a child in rags in his arms
and wanted to take its picture,
not knowing anything about the child’s situation.
He seemed to be kind to the poor,
like some compassionate, merciful god.

He was taken from one poverty to the next,
being content with this game
that finally took him back north,
into the pleasant,
where the difference was cruel,
where the poverty that had not yet arrived
would be much more cruel.

[Novi Sad; September 2nd,2006]
Translated by Wolfgang Astelbauer

 

Since

Since these many hard words have been written,
these letters left unfinished or lost,
since the writing of my hair has begun
to lose its ink and fade,
since names sink deeper and deeper into my memory
and I must almost close my eyes
to see them,
since I have begun
paying attention to the shadow of the second hand,

since then I started to realize
the lost words,
the faded hair,
the names lost sight of,
I, grey and stooping,
started to at least pay attention
to these circular repetitions.

[Weitersfeld; October 13th, 2002]
Translated by Wolfgang Astelbauer

 

Circus

The circus is set up with care
Rain falls through
The tent’s shredded grey fabric
Now and again in the pale light
Somnolent spectators
Applaud the bear-trainer
A girl on a rope turns somersaults through the air
A girl on the ground yells into the microphone
A clapping clown rolls on a ball
A man pours sweat as if he’s praying …

A donkey in the corner stomps the ground in boredom
A lion’s trapped behind the bars
A tiger leaps through loops of flame
Elephants walk in a circle
A dog barks, a musician barks
And it’s raining

I was sitting in the middle of the listless crowd
When the stranger beside me suddenly
Nudged me to applaud:
I didn’t.
And so a man arrived, a wonder to see
With a tie and a butterfly and a funny hat
Looking like he’d just emerged from some chicken coop
He angrily asked for my ticket
And when he saw it he cried:
“You’re sitting in the wrong place!”
He led me off and sat me down behind a pole
Where all I could see was the donkey in its distant corner
Sill stomping the ground in boredom.

[Vienna; March 14th, 2001]
Translated by Kareem James Abu Zeid

Tarek Eltayeb, a son of Sudanese parents, was born in Cairo in 1959. He is a Professor at the International Management Center/ University of Applied Sciences in Krems, Austria and at the University of Graz. His writings have been published Arabic, English, French, German, Macedonian, Serbian and Spanish.