Hey Buffoon!












Hey, buffoon! 
Hold on tight
watch out not to fall
torment the heedless folks
and bend your ears low
safe-guard against foe 
fear not to gaze in earnest
your royal shadow below
and if the leaves rustle, 
depart and withdraw
as walking maybe dangerous
Ye buffoon. 
Blast your fire on everything
      on unconsented breeze
on every word if uttered without a pass
train the sparrows to write
apparatus reports, 
the village lanterns, 
the towns' windows, 
every stalk of Durra has to learn
let ants become informants
the dribble learn to scribble  
their daily spying diary 
Or, better still, keep most 
people bottled up in glass
Put focus on the hungry
sink all the bloody toilers
down the seventh earth!
bombard them really hard!
expropriate the stars from the dark of night
the ebbing of tide from the sea
cancel with no excuse the face of the rising day
clip the wings of winds
freeze the veins of life 
and invalidate the Hope
call off the taming of fire and the division of labor
then maybe you will find a refuge to savor
Oh, Buffoon!


 
Buffoon...
From Mahjoub Sherif's poem Ya Bahlawi on shah Iran.
The arabic text is here.
Mahjoub Sharif, Martin Luther King, Pussy Riot (Russian pop group), an artist from Tibet, 
Snowden (SNA contractor, WikiLeaks) are among twelve prisoners of conscience to be saluted by Chinese artist Ai Wei Wei, himself barred from leaving China. The exhibition is set to take place in former Alcatraz prison, off San Francisco where each of the honored will be allocated a prison cell, one too many for Mahjoub Sharif who died this year! The ferry to reach 'Alcatraz' the prison-turned-into-museum will be $30. 
Alcatraz prison, probably the harshest of all prisons worldwide, is known as a setting for many 
movies, including Escape From Alcatraz, a Clint Eastwood movie. For more on this, visit this 
site: The Toronto Star 
The video below was my contribution to a group of Sudanese who celebrated Sharif's 
anniversary in September 2014 in Iowa City. It is a poem in Arabic which I will soon add 
English subtitles to.






Comments

  1. God have mercy on Father Mahjoub Sharif.. Thanks, Mustafa Mudathir.

    ReplyDelete
  2. My apologies. I failed to find the name of the person who translated this poem by the late poet Mahjoub Sharif 'Hey Buffoon'. It wasn't me of course.

    ReplyDelete

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