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An Amulet for Life in the Deluge

Sargon Boulos | Translated by Suneela Mubayi

Poetry Northwest is proud to feature THUS THE WAVES COME IN PAIRS (35 min, 2023), a film written by Mira Adoumier and Rana Issa, which is shaped by poems by Mahmoud Darwish, Etel Adnan, and Sargon Boulous’s poem that we are publishing below. The film revisits an ancient coastal myth in which humans and birds once lived in mutual protection, until a great fire and a city rebuilt in stone destroys the bird mountain, shattering their pact. Many decades later, as sea levels rise and silence replaces warning, the work becomes an elegy for broken kinship with the living world.

An Amulet for Life in the Deluge

In this deluge, no Noah, no ark. Should some hidden truths reveal themselves to you now, it is you who is their voice, coming from afar to where they await. You, who wanted the nakedness of the adventure; you, who burned your own maps. Sleep now at the dragon’s mouth. The storm that just blew in has destroyed your heart. Do not try to repair it; it is a home in ruins. The hunt has gone on too long, and you do not know how to pray. The treasure overflows from your hands. The river is crossed twice. The dove has returned, but the raven remains. Your friend is gone, your foe is coming . . .

And you shall live on, after he dies.

تعويذة للعائش في الطوفان

في هذا الطوفان لا نوحَ ولا سفينة…إنْ كان لبعض الخوافي أن تنجلي لكَ الآن، فأنتَ صوتُها القادم من بعيد إلى مكان انتظارها؛ أنتَ الذي أردتَ عريَ المغامرة وأحرقتَ الخريطة؛ نمْ الآن في بوّابة التنين. العاصفة التي مرّت، أتلفت قلبك: لا تحاول ترميمه، إنه بيت مخرّب. المطاردة طالت وأنت لا تعرف كيف تصلّي. طفح الكنز في اليدين. عُبر النهر، مرتين. عادت الحمامة لكن بقي الغراب. ذهب الصديق، أتى العدوّ…

وستحيا، من بعد أن يموت.

Sargon Boulos, considered one of the foremost modernists in contemporary Arabic poetry, was born in 1944 in Habbaniya, Iraq and grew up in the oil-producing city of Kirkuk. He was part of a group of other modernist writers who informally called themselves the Kirkuk Group. He emigrated to San Francisco in 1969 and died in Berlin in 2007. He published six collections of poetry in addition to a several translations from English, most notably Allen Ginsberg’s Howl.

Suneela Mubayi is a translator between Arabic, Urdu and English of mixed descent. They hold a PhD in Arabic literature from NYU and are based between New York and Oslo, Norway.

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