LIFE’S WILL (If the People Wanted Life One Day)
by Abu al-Qasim al-Shabi’s
This is the translation of poem "The Will of Life" Abu al-Qasim al-Shabi’s done by Sargon Boulat and Christopher Middleton
Life's Will
When people choose
To live by life’s will,
Fate can do nothing but give in;
The night discards its veil,
All shackles are undone.
Whoever never felt
Life celebrating him
Must vanish like the mist;
Whoever never felt
Sweeping through him
The glow of life
Succumbs to nothingness.
This I was told by the secret
Voice of All-Being:
Wind roared in the mountains,
Roared through valleys, under trees:
“My goal, once I have set it,
And put aside all caution,
I must pursue to the end.
Whoever shrinks from scaling the mountain
Lives out his life in potholes.”
Then it was earth I questioned:
“Mother, do you detest mankind?”
And earth responded:
“I bless people with high ambition,
Who do not flinch at danger.
I curse people out of step with time,
People content to live like stone.
No horizon nurtures a dead bird.
A bee will choose to kiss a living flower.
If my mothering heart
Were not so tender,
The dead would have no hiding place
In those graves yonder.
(Translated by Sargon Boulat and Christopher Middleton)
This poem appeared in English translation in Salma Khadra Jayyusi’s anthology “Modern Arabic Poetry” (Columbia University Press)
