MOHAMED METWALLI
Mohamed Metwalli was recognized as a poet in the Arab world at a young age. Shortly after his degree in 1992 from the English department of Cairo University, his volume, Once Upon a Time, won the Yussef El-Khal prize for the best first collection by a poet in the Arab-speaking world, conferred by the Lebanese publishers, Riad El-Rayyes Books. He co-founded an independent literary magazine, El-Garad, in which a second book appeared: The Story the People Tell, Here, in the Harbor and, in 1997, he was selected to represent Egypt in the International Writers' Program at the University of Iowa. The year after, he served as Poet-in-Residence at the University of Chicago. Metwalli compiled and co-edited an anthology of Off-beat Egyptian Poetry, Angry Voices, for the University of Arkansas Press in 2002. His third collection, The Lost Promenades, was published in 2010 by Al-Ketaba Al-Okhra, and A Song by the Aegean Sea came out in 2015 with Afaq Publishers. His poetry has been translated into French, German, and English, and his own translations have appeared widely in literary journals. In 2018 he was commissioned by the British Museum to render their conference publication, Asyut, Guardian City, into Arabic.
THE SMILE OF A DOG
Translated from the Arabic by Gretchen McCullough and the Mohamed Metwalli
A long time ago
The tourist watching the events
From his hotel balcony
Used to walk alone like this man
Through the long passage between the shrubs
Seeking a cloud to warm him
Or a bit stronger lighting
For scenes unworthy of filming
In his life
Or even a passing smile
Of a stray dog
On the road!
A CEMETERY OF WISHES
Translated from the Arabic by Gretchen McCullough and Mohamed Metwalli
A ferry slices through fog
Boarding passengers
With a cloud high above
To board their dreams.
When we went to the Chapel of the Virgin
On the road to Ephesus
We lighted candles
Drank from the holy spring
Then discovered in the back
A cemetery for wishes along the wall
Shaped in paper shreds
Where ten languages
Insisted upon burying their dreams
On this wall
We did not dare
To add a new scrap!