Poems of Alexandria and New York

Ahmed Morsi, Raphael Cohen

• Publisher: Banipal Publishing
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781913043155
• eBook ISBN: 9781913043162
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Ancient Poetry
• Index: Literature

Ahmed Morsi is a renowned painter as well as a prolific art critic, journalist, translator, and, as this book reveals to a new audience, a consummate poet, with his debut collection published at the age of 19. Poems of Alexandria and New York, Ahmed Morsi's first volume in English translation, captures the modernity and empathy at the heart of all his works, his surrealistic humour, and his visions of the dramas of ordinary life. It comprises two of his best known collections, Pictures from the New York Album and Elegies to the Mediterranean, both written when he resumed writing poetry following a break of nearly 30 years after the calamitous Arab defeat in the 1967 Six-Day War. The former opens up the city of New York, his home since the mid-1970s and where he still lives and works, while the latter takes readers deep into abiding memories of the Mediterranean city of his birth, Alexandria, Egypt.

ELEGIES TO
THE MEDITERRANEANImpressions of Anfoushi

IMPRESSION 1

From the sea, the fish leap onto the quays

of the Eastern Harbour gasping to see you.

You drag the nets of exile and feel

the image of your birthplace

buffeted by the winds of Amsheer*

revealed through a pinhole in the Earth,

and the feeling crushes you.

Does it matter that the traces of

your childhood are dead and buried

in the ruins of your sunken city

Atlantis

the Andalus of dead poets

my Andalus?

27 February 1998

* Amsheer: the Coptic (and ultimately Ancient Egyptian) month corresponding to 8 February to 9 March associated with stormy and windy weather.

IMPRESSION 2

The sea is polluted

its perfume of iodine mixed

with the stench of human waste.

Is that why the seagulls left

to hole up with desert serpents,

serpents of paradise?

Is that why the green, glistening sardines

are lured no longer by the songs of fishermen,

the beat of a drum,

the spray of the river?

Mould creeps up the walls of houses round here.

Steel doors no longer fend off

the attack of the sea flies.

3 March 1998

IMPRESSION 3

You might ask what makes me

visit Anfoushi*

even though my father is buried in Qabbari

while my mother is laid to rest

in the Darwish family plot in Hadrah

and my sisters

and surviving brothers

live here and there in al-Raml.

But for reasons I don’t understand

I always have and always will

look for something

that even if it has a name

or a form

or an eye to know me,

I know it not.

4 March 1998

* Anfoushi: One of Alexandria’s oldest neighbourhoods, formerly one of the Pharos Islands, and now joined to the mainland.

IMPRESSION 4

The fishing boats lie in wait

before the sealed harbour, a mouth to the sea,

watchful of any sign of the sun’s unveiling.

The catchers of red mullet and squid

the catchers of clam yawn

waiting for the call to the afternoon prayer.

Rain squalls flood the pavement.

The shore is deserted apart from you alone.

You wander aimlessly

captivated by the view.

Your black umbrella shakes in your right hand

as with your other you try to shield

a bag stuffed with dead seashells

and sheets from poetry notebooks.

Over a flagging shoulder you wearily haul

your dead and a Canon camera.

6 March 1998

IMPRESSION 5

You were – as far as I remember – seven years old

the house had a balcony

looking out to the sea.

From a corner you studied a pile of nets

covering the ground and the stone wall,

and piles of fish

glistened in the early morning light

under a lambent sun.

You explored the open blue horizon

discovering the smoke of the steamers.

Unlike ...

Table of contents

• COVER
• TITLE PAGE
• COPYRIGHT
• CONTENTS
• INTRODUCTION
• PICTURES FROM THE NEW YORK ALBUM
• ELEGIES TO THE MEDITERRANEAN
• AHMED MORSI
• RAPHAEL COHEN
• OTHER TITLES FROM BANIPAL BOOKS