Muhammad Maghout was a poet, playwright and essayist, who spent a lifetime advocating for political freedom in an Arab World run by totalitarian regimes. He was born in Salamiya, a town near Hama in Syria, in 1934. He entered the literary realm after linking up with fellow Syrian poet Adonis in Beirut in the late 1950’s. 

His poetry is characterized by its straightforwardness, simple language and sad themes that depict the unhappiness of Arab societies. He was arrested and spent three months in jail, in Syria, in 1961 for “insulting the authorities.” His most acclaimed work is “Toast to the Homeland,” a popular play about an Arab soldier, who comes back from war to face the corruption and poverty in his country.

Now,

In the third hour of the 20th century,

where nothing 

separates the corpses of the dead

from the pedestrians’ shoes except 

the asphalt,

I will lie in the street, like an old Bedouin,

and I will not get up,

until all the prison bars and convicts’ records 

in the world

are collected in front of me,

so I can chew them like sentences 

on the side of the road.

Until the batons of police and protesters

escape the fists of their holders,

and become blossoming branches (once again)

in their forests.

I laugh in the darkness.

I cry in the darkness.

I write in the darkness.

I can no longer tell my finger from my pen.

Every time someone knocks at the door,

or moves the curtains,

I hide my papers with my hand,

like somebody at a brothel in the moment of a raid.

Who conferred me this fear?

This frightened blood like a mountain leopard 

every time I see an official paper on my doorstep,

or hat from my door’s peephole,

until my tears hit my bones,

and my frightened blood escapes

in all directions,

as if the death police are chasing it from vein to vein.

Oh my love,

I uselessly try to reclaim my strength and courage.

The misery here is not

in the whip, or sirens, or the police station.

It is there 

in childhood… In the womb.

For I definitely was

connected to my mother’s womb,

not with an umbilical cord,

but with a hanging rope.

 — Translated from Arabic by Ali Harb