Poem

A VISION

All day long
in the sky this bird,
Where to rest?
"On the tree"
Where is the tree?
"In the field"
Where is the field?
"North at the wood"
Where is the wood?
"East of the mountain
"Where is the mountain?
"There you blind man, don't you see?"
Oh, yes, I see,
I see mountains of refuse, its smoke smells of fields and trees.
(a voice from the end of the 20th century):
"Signs are imminent winds. In the stars,
On that day,
the mother will not Recall her infant,
Nor the sky its stars,
And between the seasons
No time for making the crossing"

Fuad Rifka
(c) Fuad Rifka Poem supplied by the author.

Fuad Rifka, born 1930 in a small village in Syria studied filosophy in Beyrouth and got a doctoral degree in Tübingen/Germany. Rifka is one of the most importent innovators of modern poetry in Arabic poetry. Although he is a great connoisseur of Western, especially modern German poetry and translated poetry by Novalis, Hölderlin, Rilke, Trakl, his poetry is always flavoured with a metitave, Oriental perfume. His poetry has been published in French, in English, in German (Heiderhoff Verlag).

POINT published in 2001 the bilingual Arabic-Dutch anthology “De ruïne van de soefie”
(De Ruin of the Sufi), translated into Dutch by Germain Droogenbroodt in cooperation with the poet.