Farouk Jwaida's poem: what remains from the land of the prophets


ماذا تبقى من أرض الأنبياء poem’s name : what remains from the land of the prophets?  

فاروق جويدة Poet’s name : Farouk Jwaida.. 

 listen to the poem

ماذا تبقى من أرض الأنبياء؟

What remains from the land of the prophets?

لا شيء غير النجمة السوداء ترتع في السماء 

Nothing except the black star that roams in the sky

لا شيء غير مواكب القتلى 

Nothing except the parades of the killed people

وأنات النساء

And the groans of the women

فالكون تابوت 

Cause  the universe is a coffin

وعين الشمس مشنقة 

And the eye of the sun is a gallows

وتاريخ العروبة 

And the history of the Arabs…

سيف بطش أو دماء 

…is a sword of cruelty or blood

ماذا تبقى من أرض الأنبياء؟

What remains from the land of the prophets?

أترى رأيتم كيف بدلت الخيول صهيلها في مهرجان العجز 

Do you see how the horses have changed their voice in the carnival of failure?

واختنقت بنوبات البكاء 

And how they are suffocated by the crying fits

أطفالنا في كل صبح يرسمون على جدار العمر خيلا لا تجيء 

Every morning, our children draw horses that don’t come on the wall of the age

وطيف قنديل تناثر في الفضاء 

They also draw the shadow of a lamp that scatters in space

An explanation of this piece from the arabic poems :

It is a sad poem about the miserable conditions of the Arab lands.  Farouk Jwaida expresses his pain in a beautiful way, he criticizes the Arabs harshly: 

“And the history of the Arabs…

…is a sword of cruelty or blood”

The sadness in this poem goes to the maximum in some expressions:

“The universe is a coffin”

 It is really hard to think of a sadder expression than this. And there is this repetitive question throughout the poem:

“What remains from the land of the prophets?”

It is more than a title because it is the heart of the poem that beats. And this black star in the poem has a big symbolic meaning.

Farouk Jwaida is a famous Egyptian poet, was born in 1946 and still alive.  




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