Love
By Ahmed Yamani Translated by Omar Ibrahim Love was a single blow from neither an axe nor a hand — a bucket of cold water where the head and legs swim a hospital bed and blood dripping from the bedroom to the bathroom * Love was vomiting in friends’ houses where they ran here and there in search of a hope of survival * Love was painful like a rose’s thorn in the wet garden of a deserted house where a lonely man once lived then was buried inside a room * Love was that room, the man’s immortal shoe, the worn-out curtain that covered his remains * Love was the man’s only servant who hit the nosy boys then went away to cry, lonely, lonelier than the owner of the house * Love was the moment the boys were struck as they climbed mulberry trees in the abandoned garden * Love was never the mulberry tree * Love was her, with her round face and moonstruck eyes who was only ever there once. * Love was a leap from the tenth floor, that left fragments on the ground * Love was the drops of blood from the sidewalk to the ambulance * Love was the skinny body they threw out of the car * Love was the car that crashed into the lamppost * Love was the locked wardrobe inside the locked room in the grandparents’ locked house * Love was the doorman’s lit cigarette * Love was the thief who went to rob the grandparents’ house * Love was the sick woman the horror of her withered body her eyes the boiled food they took to her * Love was the axe that strikes * Love was the hand holding the axeAhmed Yamani is an Egyptian poet based in Spain. He holds a PhD in Arabic Literature from Complutense University of Madrid where he currently serves as an Associate Professor. He has published five poetry collections and was previously awarded the Rimbaud Prize in 1991, the 39th Beirut Prize in 2010, the Poets from Other Worlds Award in Spain in 2015, the House of Translators Scholarship in Zaragoza, Spain in 2011 and the Fairmont Studio Writers and Artists Centre Award in 2012 from the United States of America. His poems have been translated into nine languages, and he has participated in poetry festivals in Egypt, France, Spain, Lebanon, London, Algeria, the United Arab Emirates, Italy, Morocco and Medellin (Colombia), as well as numerous translations from Spanish to Arabic. Omar Ibrahim is an Egyptian literary translator, poet and essayist. He translated Mahmoud Morsi’s collection of poems It’s Time I Confess into English, and his Arabic translation of H. P. Lovecraft’s novella The Whisper in Darkness was on the bestselling list of many bookstores. He also has his own poetry collection, titled Fragments of My Mind, and two upcoming translations.