Old Poems

trans. Robin Moger

A book in five chapters, the first four of which contain the poems of two early Arabic language poets, al-Nabigha al-Dhubyani (‘The Prodigy of the Banu Dhubyan,’ a tribal group), said to have died in 18BH (604CE) and Dhul Rumma (’He of the Frayed Cord’) who died in 114AH (732CE). The poems are accompanied by texts taken from books of all periods, the majority of them ‘reports,’ which is to say accounts of events from the poets’ lives passed down in the same way as their poems (from contemporary witnesses through a chain of transmitters to a page): they are supposedly the roots bedded in history that gave rise to a poem’s growth, though they might also be thought of as the boughs sustained by and screening its trunk.

Almost all the material in the book is translated, with the exception of the odd line here or there. The third chapter contains two poems by Dhul Rumma and one by Golan Haji (dedicated to this translator). Golan Haji (b.1977) is a Kurdish writer from the northern Syrian town of Amouda living in Paris.  The poems by al-Nabighah al-Dhubyani revolve around the story of al-Nabighah’s exile from the Lakhmid kingdom—then ruled by al-Nu‘man Ibn al-Mundhir—to the court of the Ghassanid kings, and his eventual return to al-Nu‘man. The fifth chapter contains texts taken from The Marvellous in the Description of Spring, an anthology of Andalusian prose and poetry on the season of spring and flowers by the Sevillian poet and courtier Abu al-Walid al-Himyari, said to have died in about 440AH (1048CE).