“I Have a Cottage in the Country,” Poem, by Abdul Aziz Al-Maqalih (translated by Carmine Di Biase and Rashad Ahmed)

I have a cottage in the country,

as broad as its garden

and cossetted by the scent of roses.

At midnight

I climb up to the roof

and listen to the stars as they make their

dreamy music for me, for my soul.

The stars hold the sky’s night-time face

and write such sweet words

on it that the heart

yearns for it.

 

I have a cottage in the country

unmatched in its beauty,

which satisfies the hungry soul.

The stones I gathered with my own hands

and built the walls and rooms

like the stanzas of a poem,

but free of any rules of form.

And to adorn the façade it was

Picasso himself who helped me, lending

me his greens and blues.

 

I have a cottage in the country,

only a few humble, square meters.

The front door is of cedar.

Every dawn, the windows lead my

gaze towards mountains suspended from the sun’s

interlaced beams, towards valleys whose fingers,

covered in crystalline blades of grass,

fill with clear water

that flows proudly, like a scarf

woven by breezes

from the greenish light’s rays.

 

I have a cottage in the country,

tasteful and luminous,

bathed clean every morning by the sun

and again in the evening by the darkness.

When sadness engulfs me

and tightens round my heart,

I run there,

where I can free my soul

of the burdens it carries

from diseased and decadent cities.

 

I have a cottage in the country.

The shepherd passes every morning

under my windows

as he makes his way to the valley,

walking behind his flocks,

which grow more numerous by the day.

At noon, when the sun is too bright, too hot,

stillness and silence shade the village,

and wafting over from the far edge

of the valley come soft, enchanting melodies,

from the mouth of the shepherd’s pipe.

 

I have a cottage in the country

that has no lock or key.

At night, stars that have gone astray

can come inside, where whole flocks

of pigeons find their shelter.

The cottage is open to light,

open to shadow,

open every dawn

to the music

of chirping birds

which wakes the deer

and the water of the sleeping stream.

 

I have a cottage in the country.

If I go back there

I shall be greeted by the cypresses,

by the warmth of the cedar door

and the green grass of the walkway,

by the butterflies dancing to the rhythm

of the water, which keeps time as it rumbles

down the valley’s fingers, rubbing

their gravel beds smooth. 

 

 

I have a cottage in the country,

on the village’s rising slope,

seen by no one but me

and built by hand in a dream,

by a patient hand,

a hand that painted the stones

with the colors of tranquility,

and all of it resting on a paper

foundation, on the marble of words.

 

Can you believe, my dears,

that I own a cottage in the country,

a cottage which delights in the play of the sun’s beams

and is cossetted by the scent of roses,

and that, right under its windows, a shepherd passes by?

O this … sweet, beckoning dream.

It has lifted the veil from my heart’s eyes

with the breath of poetry, made my soul see 

again, from the highest peak

of God’s kingdom,

what cannot be seen.

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“If Adam Picked the Apple,” Poem, by Danielle Coffyn

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“Don Faggot,” Fiction, by Ricardo Quintana-Vallejo