The Iraqi poet Sargon Boulus, one of the pioneers of modern Arabic poetry, died five years ago in a hospital in Berlin. Boulus was born in 1944 to an Assyrian family in al Habbaniyah, a town on the edge of a shallow lake of the same name in western Iraq. Among the Iraqi poets of his generation, Boulus was a rare bird: the formal innovator who immersed himself in western poetry but remained anchored in the Arab tradition, the politically engaged poet who resisted political classification. He was not a communist, not a Ba’thist, but no matter where he lived, always an Iraqi.
“Dimensions” by Sargon Boulus (translated from the Arabic by Sinan Antoon)
The musician is in his corner
Gently embracing his oud, as if listening
to a pregnant belly
His fingers torture the strings
The dancer’s body is utterly seized
under the lights
Bending in the fourth dimension
Where no tickets are sold
We, the spectators, stay here with our chairs
The stage is empty