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# Singing Iraq: poetry by Hashem Shafiq
- URL: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/article-1430jsp/
- Published: 2003-08-11T23:08:00.000Z
- Updated: 2019-02-14T22:48:08.000Z
- Author: Hashem Shafiq
- Tags: #en, #Migrated, #Import 2026-04-09 19:08

The three Iraqi poets whose work is featured in **openDemocracy** – [Fadhil Assultani](https://www.opendemocracy.net/articles/View.jsp?id=1371), [Salah Niazi](https://www.opendemocracy.net/articles/View.jsp?id=1429), and Hashem Shafiq – all spoke at an event at London’s Institute of Contemporary Arts in May 2003\. Read here extracts of their discussion about language, literature and patriotism.

The translations come from *Iraqi Poetry Today*, the Spring 2003 issue of [*Modern Poetry in Translation*](http://www.kcl.ac.uk/humanities/cch/mpt/index.html?ref=opendemocracy.net).

Don’t miss too the work of the Kurdish poet [Choman Hardi](https://www.opendemocracy.net/articles/View.jsp?id=1298).

**The Mountain**  
  
I have washed the mountain,  
I have washed the stones and the snow,  
and I have washed the sand.  
I have washed the pebbles  
and the wind that clings to the trees.  
I have washed the mountain,  
I have lit the paths  
and the back ways around the mountain.  
I have lit the caves and the stairs  
and the hideouts in the folds of the mountain.  
I have washed the summit  
and every crevice of the mountain  
so that my loved ones might pass  
in the forenoon of the mountain day.  
  
I will kiss my beloved’s tears  
and her other gestures.  
I will kiss my beloved’s drowsiness  
as she teeters on the edge of sleep.  
I will kiss my beloved’s insides.  
I will kiss the air that sleeps in her lungs.  
I will kiss the fluttering of her eyelids.  
I will kiss the sway of her flowing dress.  
I will kiss her deep wound covered with roses.  
I will kiss her laughter before it issues from her lips.  
I will kiss her thoughts before they form.  
I will kiss her evanescent scent.  
I will kiss her breath before it alights on the pillow.  
I will kiss every inch of my love.  
I will kiss her voice,  
her cool shadow,  
the colour of her discontent,  
the shape of her delight.  
I will kiss her intuition,  
her fiery mind.  
I will kiss her dreams  
while she is deep in sleep.  
I will kiss her stirred imagination.  
I will kiss the gentleness in the edges of her clothes,  
the elegance of her steps,  
her dalliance with the wind.  
I will kiss her desperate panting  
and her lust coagulated in silk.  
I will kiss her reflection in the fountains,  
her appearance in mirrors.  
I will kiss her flanks and her curves  
and the space underneath her nails.  
I will kiss the sunset as it glows on my beloved’s cheek.  
I will kiss my beloved’s heartbeats  
and her apprehensions.  
I will kiss her feelings as I sleep,  
intoxicated beneath her sky.  
  
*(translated by Saadi A Simawe and Ralph Saverese)*  
  
**Destinies**  
  
My daughter works each night  
to make my knee her pillow.  
I tell her tale after tale  
until she falls asleep.  
I tell her about the silk of the moon.  
I tell her about coloured waters,  
walking playgrounds,  
the buried fortunes in her hair.  
I tell her about scattered stars  
drifting down through the sky like feathers.  
I tell her about a blue orange  
and a mountain circling the city all night  
and a pure white elephant.  
I tell her about everything.  
But when she asks for my story, I slip  
around this corner and that  
until she drowses on my knee and falls asleep.  
  
*(translated by Saadi A Simawe an Ellen Doré Watson)*  
  
**Mirage**  
  
Nobody told me when I was born  
that my life would be harder than my father’s and son’s lives.  
Nobody told me when I was a child  
that life was full of pits and tunnels and trackless labyrinths.  
Nobody told me when I was a youth  
that my homeland was not a homeland  
and that my enemy and friend are aligned against me  
and my lover would be as fickle as a chameleon.  
Nobody, except Brecht, told me when I was a young man  
that exiles are shoes,  
and only Sartre told me  
that political parties are religions,  
and only Abu al-Atahiah told me that mankind is a curse.  
And when I became an adult,  
I did not tell myself: beware of tomorrow.  
  
(Ismail ibn al-Qasim Abu al-Atahiah (CE 748-826), an ascetic poet, was born in Kufa, Iraq, and died in Bagdhad)  
  
*(translated by Saadi A Simawe and Ralph Savarese)*