top of page
Trans. Valentina Viene

This is your city


A poem by Ali Jazo

Ali Jazo is a Syrian Kurdish poet and Damascus University law graduate who fled Syria in 2013 and now lives in Lebanon, working as an editor at Al-Arabi Al-Jadid. He has published three collections of poems and written plays and screenplays, appearing in the Syrian French film Snow in Kurdistan.

Abandoned bags are tossed about by the noon breeze.

Tree leaves, narrow pavements,

children next to shoes,

teens, out of school, are smoking.

The curls on their foreheads are so shiny

they look frozen and stiff.

.

This is your city.

Banks spread like cancer, the poor spilled like blood,

hospitals like slaughter houses.

The unemployed, travelling strangers,

shyness clings to their faces

like frost on murky glass.

.

This is your city.

Stop! Don’t look! And don’t forget!

A huge poster freezes your eyes

like ice freezes a little flower’s corolla.

هذه مدينتك.

هذه مدينتك.

أكياسٌ مرميةٌ ينفخُها هواءُ الظهيرة،

أوراقُ أشجارٍ، وأرصفة ضيقة.

.

ثمة أطفالٌ قرب أحذية،

مراهقون -خارج المدارس-مدخنون،

خصلاتُ شعرهم تلمع فوق الجباه

حدَّ أنها تبدو مجمدة يابسة.

.

هذه هي مدينتك.

بنوك كالسرطان وفقراء كالدماء ومشافٍ كالمذابح.

عاطلون عن العمل، مهاجرون غرباء،

التصق الخجلُ بوجوههم

مثلما يلتصق البردُ بزجاج معتم.

.

هي ذي مدينتك

قفْ، لا تنظرْ، ولا تنسَ.

شاشة إعلان ضخمة تجمِّدُ عينيك

كما يجمِّدُ الصقيعُ تاجَ زهرةٍ صغيرة.

21 views0 comments

Recent Posts

See All

Reviving the Relics of the Saints

Wipe my exhausted forehead, Give me back the stolen evening chants. My memory, which you infused with blame, I lent it to the sun. The...

To the Women Torn Apart

She washed herself in the street. The river couldn’t be reached. She took her clothes away in public but she wasn’t naked: there was a...

bottom of page