Paradise of the First Buffaloes
Saadi Youssef | Poetry, Translations
translated by Khaled Mattawa
If only this country, that was once water
would return to what it was: water.
What to say for myself now that time has pushed me to the edge,
now that the covenant has broken.
Baghdad is a prison,
Basra stricken with cancer,
Al-Qaeda in Mosul.
What brings water and fire together?
What brings clay to fire?
What joins bird and fire?
And that country that was once water
is no longer bound by language and song.
Monsters of ancient ages roam its deserts
preparing a feast from her children’s flesh.
Perhaps the ones happy with their chains
have read the clay tablets of Babylon,
or the statues of Ashur,
or the papyri of Sumer,
or half a line that mentions a country named Iraq.
Perhaps.
But the buffalo chew the cud,
and chew,
and chew.
So, what’s the use?
Saadi Youssef (1934-2021) is considered one of the most important contemporary poets in the Arab world. He was born near Basra, Iraq. Following his experience as a political prisoner in Iraq, he has spent most of his life in exile, working as a teacher and literary journalist throughout North Africa and the Middle East. He is the author of over forty books of poetry. Youssef has also published two novels and a book of short stories, and several books of essay and memoir. Youssef, who spent the last two decades of his life in London, was a leading translator to Arabic of works by Walt Whitman, Ngugi wa Thiongo, Federico Garcia Lorca, among many others.
Khaled Mattawa is the William Wilhartz Professor of English Language and Literature at the University of Michigan. His latest book of poems is Fugitive Atlas (Graywolf, 2020). A MacArthur Fellow, he is the current editor of Michigan Quarterly Review.