Spring 2022 | Ashur Etwebi and James Byrne Read "Death, Peppermint Flavoured" – MQR Sound
The Spring 2022 issue of MQR features the poem, "Death, Peppermint Flavoured," by Ashur Ewebi, translated into English by James Byrne and Ashur Etwebi. In this recording, James Byrne reads the poem in English, followed by Ashur Etwebi reading the poem in the original Arabic.
Why I Chose It: Michigan Quarterly Review reader A. Shaikh introduces Ashur Etwebi’s poem “Death, Peppermint Flavoured,” translated by Etwebi and James Byrne for our Spring 2022 issue, “Decades of Fire.” You can purchase the issue here.
There is something about Ashur Etwebi’s work which transcends even the common domain of English. Such is the beauty of a great translation, which renews a reader’s belief in what is possible when we cross linguistic borders. “My desire is a song tangled in the beak of birds”, writes Etwebi, at once succinct and profound. I applaud “Death, Peppermint Flavored” for its elegiac devotion and interrogation of language. Etwebi’s poem floats off the tongue and grabs the immediate attention of the mind.
Death, Peppermint Flavoured
Sleep is the stem of a peppermint.
It can only be seen horizontally.
Sleep is the roundness of the universe. Sleep is a stretched courtyard.
Sleep, the jar of language. Sleep, a box of photographs.
Sleep, the crown seal.
Sometimes, facing the sun,
the hands of sleep became a sofa where every creature sat.
It’s difficult to choose between a bird and a bull.
The bird spreads its wings in a vast sky,
and the bull carries the sun tirelessly.
Difficult to choose between wearing my clothes or wearing nakedness.
A door is cleverer than me, it has two hearts.
Often, I feel my sleep is like rain,
and my desire is song tangled in the beaks of birds.
I am like a robe hanging from a crack in the sky.
On the wall of night, I lay down my blues.
To ascend or descend. Choices I neither take, nor leave behind.
Translated from the Arabic by
Ashur Etwebi and James Byrne
