The poet
Muhammad Gaddafi Masoud (known as Abu Salah), born in 1978 in Gharyan, Libya, holds a theater diploma from Tripoli’s Jamal Al-Din Al-Miladi Institute (2000) and is the author of several collections, including lyrical poetry (We Woke Up to Joy, 2006) and journalistic dialogues (My Dialogues with Them, 2008). Widely published across the Arab world, his work has been translated into numerous languages—English, Chinese, Spanish, Polish, French, Italian, and Albanian—and appeared in international print and online journals from Spain to Argentina. In 2024, he was selected as one of 72 global poets for an Italian-language anthology curated by Angela Costa, reflecting his broadening transnational literary presence.
The poetThe translator
Dr Salwa Gouda is an accomplished Egyptian literary translator, critic, and academic affiliated with the English Language and Literature Department at Ain Shams University. Holding a PhD in English literature and criticism, Dr. Gouda pursued her education at both Ain Shams University and California State University, San Bernardino. She has authored several academic works, including Lectures in English Poetry and Introduction to Modern Literary Criticism, among others. Dr. Gouda also played a significant role in translating The Arab Encyclopedia for Pioneers, a comprehensive project featuring poets, philosophers, historians, and literary figures, conducted under the auspices of UNESCO. Recently, her poetry translations have been featured in a poetry anthology published by Alien Buddha Press in Arizona, USA. Her work has also appeared in numerous international literary magazines, further solidifying her contributions to the field of literary translation and criticism.
Leave the Crook
Put down that shepherd’s crook,
you with the polished air.
Stop your circling,
your blind stumbles
out of the dream.
That stick you wave
at a flock of children,
making a holy vow
that only blooms
when your tragedy peaks.
You weave your cloak from a people’s faith,
stitching sunbeams to pretty lies.
When you’re lost in ecstasy,
the desert shows you its face
and I make it into dreams,
so you can offer a rose
to the era that never saw you born.
Nothing promises you anything.
You’re past the end.
No fantasy holds you up,
no color hides you.
You don’t need a hiding cap,
you need a helmet.
Your reflection has changed,
and being different has made you
a slippery, mercury question.
Oh, child of the Boundless.
Ghosts Coming Home
A question plants its roots
deep in the dirt,
grows in the rain of being far from home.
My heart calls out to its own beat
until I hit the point
where a mountain of trouble gives way.
I come back, wanting a meeting
set in the frame of “never can be,”
whispering to the strings of feeling,
spinning glances from threads.
Every time I grit my teeth and step toward it,
stride confident,
I try to catch a moment that time washes away,
yanked back by a wire of fear,
laughed at by how things are.
Like the road to Jerusalem,
the road to you feels impossible.
In my town, suspicions
are sharp tongues.
Love’s ghosts come home
carrying disappointments.
For you, my heart drifts in daydreams,
looking for a nest bullets can’t find,
a road where the poet meets
a rose named Fatima.
Her nails are short, won’t scratch what’s proper,
her tongue is soft,
dripping honey-words.
Nothing in front of me, nothing behind.
All the talking’s done…
just silver linings of sadness.
No sweetheart do I trust
who’s fluent in every tongue.
Every time the sun comes close,
I fail to catch a ride on my own shadow.
A Tendril Cut with Sighs
Who put you in my world,
a beautiful lie?
Who dressed you in tempting questions,
stirred you up in a storm
until you became an appointment
spread across my eyelid,
heavy from no sleep,
my pink-cheeked child?
How can your face be level with the sun,
you who are other people’s sin?
When you roar inside their quiet
and they show the fangs of their goodness.
You make tears ring through my streets,
climb my peace
with a light, ambitious trick.
You put on the wound
so the hurt in you hits its peak,
your own veins cut their arteries,
you cry hot coals,
you hide in my silence,
hoping it gives you a tendril
cut down with sighs.
On the House’s Hip
We write on the house’s hip:
We are here.
We chew on the street’s loneliness
’til the alley turns
into a moon on the soul’s shoulder.
The wind’s wound…
you tell it like a secret.
Lightning drinks its glass,
and we drink down the question.
Sparrows soften the bitter cold.
What’s the point of staying…?
The olive tree left it to the windows
to tell what’s left
of the shouting inside us,
tossing it in the grinder.
Different in the Glance’s Mint
He sprinkles his being lost,
hands out blood to the embers,
sketches wild thyme,
offers a tea glass
to two people different in the glance’s mint—
is it green… or has it yellowed…?
He spins stories with coffee
made from surprise-rain.
Used to climbing the stairs
right into the clouds’ curves,
except a bone in the bitter taste… snapped.
Naked with Certainty
One nap-time,
she pulled back the curtains of her glare,
let her sadness go naked.
Layla doesn’t give mirrors a chance
to catch what’s alike and not alike.
She became one with the clear rain,
curled into laughter on the skyline,
she knew the wolf’s kiss was danger.
First to arrive, a knight
carrying baskets of myths,
wiping away alone-ness.
Oh, the running away of names from their names,
and the end of questions where they start.
I whispered in autumn’s ear,
“Hide from the seasons’ calm.”
Rain stitches the earth a shirt
for those naked with certainty.
Childishness
Lost in the childishness of my wrongs,
I can’t tell an earthworm
from the dirt.
I told the tree: My darling,
and it leaned into the wind.
I thought the sparrow was a bullet,
so I hit the dirt
when it flew off scared.
I got intimate with the clock,
and pleasure came late
on Viagra-time.
I tried to hide behind
my shoe… but it let me down,
just stepped aside.
I walked all wobbly,
threw a rock at my shadow,
and it bounced back as bullets
and bleeding vine-shoots.
Waiting for the News
I knot my will around me
a circle
pull it tight, it’s a noose,
let it loose, it’s exile
that gets bigger the tighter
the squeeze gets.
Waiting for a father to throw his shadow on us.
The night-lords get happy,
they sing us songs
and speeches
at first light,
the holiday’s end.
Waiting for the news to come,
to let out its last shout.
A stud grows old
King of the flock,
boss of the females,
when there’s no stud in charge.
Wheat of Words
Rain draws up
houses in the clouds,
chairs made of light.
Angels plow the night
of happiness.
They plant songs in
the brass threshing-floors,
beating the wheat of words.
Summer of Quiet
Plow the summer of quiet.
Wait for music to choke
in the sun’s throat.
Get a hideout ready for the keys
of the bruised soul.
Hanging onto the rain’s dawn,
flirting with the eyelashes of a sigh
napping on dream’s doorstep,
holding the hand of the tempted
fruit.
So Dad Won’t Smell
I crank the TV
loud
so Dad won’t smell
the cigarettes.
I scramble his senses.
Hide what you can feel
with what you can’t see
’cause my dad hates “the vibe”
and calls smokers sick people.
He Knows and Doesn’t Know
He props up the lean of his question,
the big one.
Without knowing
he’s the one who’s leaning.
Tightness
No sound strips me bare
but time’s handkerchiefs
wiping themselves,
and ruin is born
blooming tight little dreams.
The Cut
My cut points to
the next hour
of a pain
that whips me with laughter.
After the Let-Down
I watch it, but it doesn’t rain.
I come back hooked on what
I’m carrying—certainty.
Because after the let-down,
there’s only the dream.
Story
At the edge of a story,
a seagull fell
in the water.
Letters
Letters at a boil,
the hidden musk.
A palm tree falling
in the valley of veins.
Her Look
Our lips broke
seeing her look.
Woodsman
He gathered wood
from the bleeding sun,
sold the horizon
at auction.
Happiness
Cut from the barking
of happiness.
Split
A laugh splits itself
by itself.
Who shuts the sigh’s door?
She Said
Okay, she said, she sat my old age
in the back seat and turned
toward the door.
Sigh
A certain sigh, farther
than a star at my edge,
I craved the taste of dirt.
