• The Apple at Its Own Funeral

The boy grew weary, begging his own bones and skin

He reaps nothing from the earth’s adornments but its wars.

Not even his garment wears – he does not live that long

Nor does he hear the melody of life…

His brow is high, like a prophet’s;

He has no sheep,

No wood,

No serpents,

No hoopoe, no ants,

No well,

No home,

And no woman running toward him.

…

He seeks no sea from the seashell,

Nor the drowned from its depths;

He wants no prying fishermen,

No gods, no recurring mysteries;

He does not want her as a mere “female”—

For a woman is not the same as a “female,” as the poet said.

…

Do you want him as a pearl upon your wrist,

Or as a memory unable to bid you farewell…

Do you want him as a fever,

Or as a desolate road—

The dying grasp of a hand seeking another hand,

Two beads in the pupils, their fading alike,

Like a meter humming within a classical poem…

…..

So, who will reach out to the woman as she whispers to the apple at its funeral?

Who will lay the woman upon the poet’s pale body?

Who will turn on the tap of weeping

Upon the earth,

To fill the prophet’s well?

By Ali Farhan

Translated by Faleeha Hassan 

…………….

Translator’s Note:  The poem’s opening stanza is built on a web of allusions to Islamic prophetic stories. The line comparing the boy’s highbrow to a prophet’s means that dignity is essentially all he has left. The items he’s said to lack aren’t just signs of poverty — each one points to a specific prophet: the missing sheep evoke the prophets who worked as shepherds before receiving their calling; the missing hoopoe bird and ants refer to Solomon, whose story famously involves both creatures (the bird carried his message to a foreign queen, and he alone could understand the ants); and the missing wood and snake likely refer to Moses, whose staff turned into a serpent in front of Pharaoh. Taken together, these absences mean the boy carries the noble bearing of a prophet but none of the miraculous proof that usually goes with it.