Supplications - Dr. Abdulaziz Al-Maqaleh

My God...
I seek refuge in you from the evil of myself,
From the evil of my people,
Form the evil of my good friends,
From the evil of my enemies who are poor of love,
From the evil of what the panegyrists had written,
And from the evils of what the spitfulls had written.
I seek refuge in You God from an insomnia in the stars,
From an anxiety in the breasts of the mountains,
From the disappointment in the souls of men,
From a country unsheathing its death,
Holding its disappointment,
And rolling afraid of the memories.

My God...
I will confess now I cheated the sparrows,
That I satirized the gardens,
I quarrelled with the sun,
I made to the sea alone,
And waited out the beautiful time.
Nevertheless I get nothing but the waste.
Yet, I submitted to the doubt, I stubborned,
Scattered - half in craziness and half in conscious.
That is why the boils of time have got me,
I saw my bier,
I mixed things impossible to name.

My God...
Hastily you brought,
And I hoped that I hastily went back to you
And put the jewels of my sorrow in your hands.
And the most precious pain that my childhood has spared
Oh, nothing could get me but the weeping
Because I was afraid when I descended to this earth.
The claws of my own fears terrified me.
I tried, I wished, I was able
To twist, to become a dew, a stone,
To immigrate and to erase my name
And to rub it out of the creation book.

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Dr. Abdulaziz Al-Maqaleh (born 1937) Yemen
Translation: by: Soheil Najm
Source: American Institute for Yemeni Studies