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Dear All, Some more food for our souls - Iraqis' and outsiders'. The poems are by Iraqis. Perhaps poetry helps us to sense the feelings of other people more acutely than plain language can. Here, feelings of pain, sorrow, despair... I hope you won't be angry with me for posting this. --Elga P.S. Danke, Andreas, fuer die deutsche Fassung des Textes. I forgot in my posting to JP. [Nachdichtung = free rendering or adaptation (?)] ----- And here are the Iraqi poems. http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2003/634/bsc13.htm A personal song By Saadi Youssef Is it Iraq? Blessed is the one who said I know the road which leads to it; Blessed is the one whose lips uttered the four letters: "Iraq, Iraq, nothing but Iraq." [12] (1) Distant missiles will applaud; Soldiers armed to the teeth will storm us; Minarets and houses will crumble; Palm trees will collapse under the bombing; The shores will be crowded With floating corpses. We will seldom see Al-Tahrir Square In books of elegies and photographs; Restaurants and hotels will be our roadmaps And our home in the paradise of shelter: MacDonalds' KFC Holiday Inn; And we will be drowned Like your name, O Iraq, "Iraq, Iraq, nothing but Iraq" London, March 15, 2003 (1) The line is from the well-known poem, Unshudat Al- Matar (Rainsong), by the pioneering Iraqi poet Badr Shakir Al-Sayyab (1926-1964). ### Wine and grief By Muzaffar Al-Nawwab The tavern is asleep. Forgive me, I will leave now. My heart is filled with wine and grief: I wish I could roll in the sand And the scent of melon On the banks of the Tigris. ... I hear an infant crying in his cradle: Please God, let him have a homeland I lived without one! ... Baghdad wakes up from her dream, Naked; She washes her beauty with dew And twilight blueness; She goes inside to God And comes out carrying the Sun And some mint tea from Basra. The banks of the Tigris are still asleep: The informant forgot his report On the table and is gone. The report says: the wine is bad. He lies about everything, Even about the wine! ### _______________________________________________ Sent via the discussion list of the Campaign Against Sanctions on Iraq. To unsubscribe, visit http://lists.casi.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/casi-discuss To contact the list manager, email casi-discuss-admin@lists.casi.org.uk All postings are archived on CASI's website: http://www.casi.org.uk