Al-Saddiq Al-Raddi is one of the leading African poets writing in Arabic today. He has gained a wide audience in his native Sudan for his imaginative approach to poetry and for the delicacy and emotional frankness of his lyrics. His poetry has always been concerned with the rich cultural and linguistic diversity of Sudan and its complex history.
Saddiq was born in 1969 and grew up in Omdurman Khartoum where he lived until forced into exile in 2012. From 2006, he was the cultural editor of Al-Sudani newspaper until he was sacked from his position for political reasons (along with 22 other colleagues) in July 2012 during the uprising against the dictatorship of Omar Al-Bashir. Saddiq only escaped imprisonment because, thanks to the miraculous timing of Poetry Parnassus (the world’s largest ever gathering of international poets at which Saddiq represented Sudan), he was in the UK when a series of mass arrests took place. He successfully applied for asylum and is now living in London.
Saddiq’s first poetry collection Songs of Solitude was published in 1996 (second edition, 1999). He has also published The Sultan’s Labyrinth (1996) and The Far Reaches of the Screen… (1999 & 2000); all three collections were published in one volume as Saddiq’s collected poems in Cairo in 2009.
One of the six poets taking part in the PTC’s first World Poets’ Tour in October 2005, Saddiq received a rapturous response from audiences in the UK. In March 2006 he returned to the UK and gave a moving reading at the Poetry Cafe as part of their occasional series ‘In Town Tonight’ featuring important international poets visiting London. In the autumn of 2006, he was invited to take part in the LitUp festival in Kendal, and he also gave readings in Brighton and at SOAS in London. In 2008 he took part in the second World Poets’ Tour.
‘Poem of the Nile’ was published in The London Review of Books one of the rare occasions the LRB has published poetry translated from Arabic and the first time they featured the work of an African poet. His poems have also been published in Poetry Review and The Times Literary Supplement. This is a real indication of Saddiq’s growing status as an important international poet.
Saddiq’s involvement with the PTC stimulated his interest in translation. Back in Sudan, he began an innovative project that involved writers in Arabic from northern Sudan collaborating with writers in English from the south to translate each others’ work, a project with enormous political significance in divided Sudan and which he later had to abandon because of the serious risks involved. In 2007, he set up the website Sudanese Ink, a showcase for writers from Sudan and beyond.
In 2010 he was invited to take part in the prestigious Poetry International Festival in Rotterdam. He then travelled to the UK for a series of readings alongside Corsino Fortes from Cape Verde. Whilst in London, a party was organised for him at The Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology which holds a significant collection of ancient Sudanese artefacts. As a result of the success of this event (and earlier visits to the Petrie in 2005 and 2006), the Petrie Museum made a successful application to ACE for Saddiq to spend time working in the Museum as their poet in residence during the summer of 2012.
Collection of Poems
In the water
in silence at your side
in a fire that draws us close
I drift –
and only you can call me
. . . . . . . . . .
A bird enters spring
like a lance
Your eyes flash their secrets
A kiss grazes the rainbow
The rain rains
But the streets are empty of my friends
Lamps are extinguished
in the far-flung houses
and the lost heart echoes in its lonely chamber
You give your blessings to those who depart
and leave the rest to fate
Your heart thumps —
as if she were already
at your door.
Or — as if expecting her —
all the birds in the midday sky
arrive to clamour at your window.
………
An age of patience.
A forest of fluttering
I only notice
a woman who gets no notice
someone who follows my footsteps
I see myself
multiplied –
delving in images, drifting in memories
intuiting exodus
………
I am blind to boats enameled with light for show
Even when light graces the treetops,
their hearts are dark
I am elusive as perfume, a vagrant gust of wind,
and no one remembers me
………
A great souk
A great souk
swallows the sound of a scythe
with a silence entrenched in its roots
Worms ignore a woman
who burns her history while she is born anew
Whoever lights up the past
sets the future ablaze
with a light that will neither burn boats nor taint hearts
Civilisation springs from a river:
the brilliant glint of an amulet
permits this story to be told
Who came first – a God or a King?
Who opens the door
Who holds the key to the mystery of eternity?
. . . . . .
The firstborn is an enigma
an amulet
a mirror
fused from burnished copper
an icon of the sun buried in a grave
a grave in a riverbed in the grave of a river
Let the wind blow from a fisherman’s mouth,
from the span of a sail to the shell of a boat,
unlocking the mouth of the river –
So, shout, drowning man, when you founder
in treacherous waters
At dawn, the river embarks in silence
Riverbanks glean suns from the scales of dead fish
Jostled by eddies, the aroma of flotsam and jetsam
bakes in the shade
Becalmed, a breeze freights the stillness
Sails lazily unfurl
They sail all night from afar,
ploughing the river with ritual persistence,
staring darkness straight in the eye
You set sail at dawn,
infused with the tincture of a heart
that had beached your whole life ashore
And yet, another beloved
is offering you heaven on earth in her glance,
demanding only the perfection of poetry – everything!
I
The little boy, playing in bed
while his wounded mother cooks,
is throwing little words and circles
out of the window.
She smiles
(the whole world lights up)
he chatters excitedly – What can he see?
There’s a monkey at the window –
behind the door!
But he is falling
into darkness.
And though he never raises a cry
he holds up his claws – this dark
stormy
boy.
II
She never taught him how to cry only how to sing.
Happy in herself – just as she wished to be –
she taught him endless space and vastness
and she calls him: Open-hearted.
Behind him a mountain of metaphors
in front a river a mouthful of night
and a train of caravans calling him away.
(Where is that thread
that fire
the skill?)
III
Running – down an alleyway
he splashes cooking oil all over his shorts this boy!
He wets himself
with laughter
running through Eternity –
through this alleyway
this pack of dogs
the conspiracies of fate!
IV
The solid front door remembers the hand that made it –
You are the key –
and the creak of the universe — it’s your sole secret
You lean your dreams and future against it.
For its sake you endure the woodworms
gnawing through your heart
the reek of damp
the hammering of enemies and relatives.
(Long is the absence of light
that paints things awake –
Long is the presence of paint!)
You come home exhausted — from wherever you’ve been
the wind at your side — just as you wished
toyed with by traumas.
Once he made necklaces from seashells
colouring them with his own fairytales
once he made friends with strange frogs
– and all the while she’s watching him
from behind the door /from out the window
(when she runs to pick him up
he will not raise
a cry!)
V
In the forest the lonely one knows all the voices
beckoned by the eyes of loved ones
their songs are luring her
with their tender fingers
and her own translucent solitude.
She sits in silence
close to every thing
brewing tea
stirring the porridge.
In the garden
of a strange home her home
she welcomes the pots and pans
to the sounds of morning.
Scrubbing everything in its proper place
one eye on the radio
that calls her to those distant sands
the desert.
But her colour flow like a river
so she can sing….
And that boy?
………. ………….
In a green forest
or a red forest
or a desert
now who calls him to Eternity?
She made sense of your past
She lifted the weight of the present
in an instant
When she came,
light dawned
…….
A ladder for lost birds
tossed in the winds,
or splayed on the grill –
their smothered cooing
their withering wings
their dismembered craws
A ladder
that steals light from a tear
for a candle embracing its loneliness
…….
The sad afternoon settles near her
close to hand
She toys with scents and meanings
A train travels down the tunnel of a lifetime
and the streets of your childhood fade into the distance
Something tossed on a chair
makes you linger –
the scent of her tea
her fruitful laughter
Another woman crosses your absence
and the rest pass by
As you strain to listen
it goes right through you –
a solitary nail
hammered in a wall
Aloft
as though lifted on fingertips –
and yet waves have no fingers
Her desire
structures the water –
and yet waves have no structure
In the split second
between crest and collapse
the world is created
and the world is annulled
without end
1
The watchman cleaves to his lantern
The knight clings to the neck of his horse
My name was passed down from mother to daughter –
like the songs sung by caravans to bolster their courage
My name is the gleam of a golden scarab
The tribe is both sustenance and a finely-wrought necklace
The journey is like a tattoo
Survival is balanced on the point of a spear
2
Each millennium a woman journeyed along Darb Al Arbaien 1
Richly attired as she travelled the road back and forth
She may not return
Each millennium she starts out once more
… … …
What remains: a ladle that keeps its own counsel
A clay pot punctured by millennia
A necklace of shells from distant seas, of shells gleaned from a far-off riverbed – pottery
stained with the patina of copper – the blown egg of an ostrich, etc, etc
What remains: revelation
3
The fount of wisdom is pierced by
the point a dagger
… … …
An epoch of atrocities witnessed by the diggers of graves. Temples razed to the ground. Tales told by men whose fingers fire flames. Violated women branded by poverty, scorned with shame. Then came the discourse of separation and selection. Then came camp followers, wielding division, corrupt catalogues of sins straddled on camels, difference decreed by the naked eye. Numberless tongues were ripped out to be trammelled under the hooves of horses.
The end of a tribe is a tribe.
He has trapped himself in a blank page.
He creates a home in it
for a woman
who unwraps there his own
inner world. He glows
in this world he aches for
and lives in,
yet which is not his.
In a forest where they drive off the tree trunks
and carve the light
It must be
You must be
To open the wound
To write in its blood – with its blood
means your realisation through her –
the feel of her absence, like a sail, within you
as you near the secret of existence
………..
Truly
a distance remains that sets the mirage ablaze –
a step to cross the absence
contrast
by contrast
creates the path, unfurls the flags
Chance –
flee from intuition
Senses –
draw near doubt
Vessels – too narrow –
accumulate
Imagine the dialogue between chains
and bloodied ankles,
the conversation between shackle
and wrist
Hurry, naked ones – take pity on me
cloak my superstitions with drumbeats and incense
Chant, chant
Proclaim your ghosts
Ignite in celebration
In mourning
In mourning
As an omen
Time engulfs you: the past
piles up on a cart or in the street
It winds you
Your glass becomes a weapon
Enduring your dream
you hesitate
between a horse and desire
Plunged into lethargy
you wager fire in the streets
Absolute time: your past –
from the square to the prison
salted with bitterness and doubt
Between ink and a tear
The word is prostrated-with its head held high
It evokes its own divinity
It illuminates the page
Prelude:
Walls climb the ivy
And Khartoum, poised on its unamputated foot
Singing
Will the Nile ever escape into sleep?
We were the most loving of lovers, children trickling from us
What name do you give me?
I call you Presence of Earth
Come closer then
What will be the taste of grief?
…………………..
And we parted!
Sura:
The Nile flows quietly…
Seeping through the city’s silence
And the burning sorrows of villages.
Now friends no longer exchange greetings each morning
No longer recognize each other.
Everywhere one sees them, these one-time prophets,
Poverty-stricken, sipping their tea, their tears,
Speechless.
They hide death in their fraying clothes,
And all they can say to our children is: patience.
They fade into the trees, commit suicide
At night, derive from alcohol
Their arguments, embark on futile wars
With their women, give up
Their prayers, then disappear.
Walls climb the ivy
And Khartoum, sitting in a café
Smoking
In the dark you can’t tell apart
Muggers from those whose journeys they’d cut short.
We were lovers, looking for our children
Who were breaking into bakeries, stealing fire
From the ovens’ throats.
What name do you give me?
I call you earth’s Fiery Anger
So rise up
What will be the taste of ashes?
…………………….
And we parted!
Sura:
Fire is the opposite of Water
And Smoke is a memory that prepares us only for ash.
Water is the opposite of Fire
And the waves are like maps, rippling across the land.
And the girl? She is somewhere between this heart and this knife…
City – you’re a handful of grains of wheat, tucked
Into the purses of usurers and slave-traders.
And the black men
Are approaching, approaching. River Nile
To what deserts are you taking my reflections? You depart
And I stand among the horses, by your gate,
And my soul would embark on a holy journey too,
For the silence suspended between us
Is a language floating among the ruins of a beautiful, vanished
past.
O River Nile, father
Were the trees merely windows reflecting women’s sorrows,
Or have your waters shattered their images,
Drowned the history of women,
And painted forever their meadows the colour of poverty?
Poverty invades the children’s playgrounds, leaving
Them silent, accursed, their heritage
Only anger and disbelief.
Sura:
The Nile opens his arms
Speaks to the migrant birds
Falls silent
Reigns
And never sleeps
Never sleeps
The Nile drinks dry the desert’s tavern,
Gets drunk on dumps of toxic waste,
Must survive in the city, falling apart
Each night, rising up through its history
And never sleeps
Never sleeps
The drums began with the sun
And its light filtered songs that entered into the pores of the soul.
In the river’s shallows boats sheltered from toil and wind.
Now the carnivals of the blacks take fire
And the Nile has burst through the layers of time.
And, see, the kingdom of Meroë appears
And the face of the Nubian lover
Who walks among the sorrows of the waterwheels
Searching for warriors among the horses.
Where does the line of ancestral blood begin
And when does the blood loss reach its climax,
O King Piankhy, enthroned ruler of Kush,
A kingdom unravelling in bitter silence?
Shout at the horses, and let
The waters ready themselves.
Let the maps explode. How can the land be lost
When the future belongs to the Nile?
The Nile knows of the disgrace of cities
That have vanished.
Knows of the old times
Yet never speaks.
It is the Nile…
Generations will pass, and there will always be children
Lingering on its banks,
Waiting
For it all to end.
Between the last night
and the first night…
a lake of tranquility…
…. ….
Leave that glass of memory to memory –
let its essence transmute all these nights into gold
Leave the voice of Ali Farka Toure
soaring
through the silvered light of that room,
a room inlaid with the jewels of minutes and hours
Leave your hands lost in the fleeting characters of a
keyboard
Leave that wooden rocking-horse
the old teddy-bear propped on a chair
the neighbouring gardens
Leave the sun still toying with the sky at eight in the evening
Leave the window open
on a morning arrayed with morning
Leave that flower labouring to consume you
Leave the peacock emblazoned on a field of beauty
Leave…. …. ….
Whatever little time is left
will never return…
These jewels cannot return
Thirst will not be slaked by the distant glimpse of a sail
And when you left
you were burnished,
you were consumed and yet complete,
you were fashioned from mother-of-pearl
Then, suddenly, once again,
you were downcast in clay
Weekdays returned, empty handed
Routine returned
And silence reigned
What tempts a barman in the small hours?
Nursing a drink that bores him,
he rinses the dishes, glancing
at the customers snoring in their seats –
slumped in the pall of yesterday’s news,
petty fights and crude jokes
Fixing his mind on the coming day,
scratching an armpit, he pisses and wheezes
Clouds scud past the door
Birds flit on the windowsills
singing songs of those who have left
songs of those who will never return
Sip by sip
he is clearing his head
with his toast to the morning
I saw the angel
and the singing birds slaughtered.
I saw the horse,
the soldiers,
the grieving women,
the dead trees, and other women
inured to screams and wailing.
I saw the streets, the gusting wind,
the sports cars
racing by, the boats, the innocent kids.
I said, ‘Master of the Water, this is
how things are: tell me about the clay,
the fire, the smoke, the shadows, the smell
of reality.’ Deliberately, I did not ask
about our homes.
I
The kings who have gone
left us the remains of their forgettable names —like Aleece or Kush
They left us their peculiar crowns
shards of skeletons
fish-heads
unpronounceable words
kohl-sticks
commandments
and eulogies graven in stone
Yet I left you radiant,
resplendent, wherever your throne sets downLive blood in mortal veins –
truly you are unforgettable
II
You accompany me
to the gates of ancient Rome
reaching the ends of perfection
as you envisage grace threading each tender aperture
as you envisage the faultless line, and the perfect circle
Let us be brothers in stone
hand in hand
fingers entwined —
and then,
on the threshold of a bar
we clink our glasses
as you add the last touch
to a face already dreaming its history
III
Which of us is the key?
Your door or mine?
IV
Silence is bliss
Life is blissCreation is bliss
Even though his chair is empty
even though he is gone
darkness is ablaze
with the presence of his embrace
V
What is the key?
Poetry – may you be a green body.
May you be a language
in which I wander
with my wings and my self.
Be the inspiration of my tongue,
so that I may pasture
the tribes of my voice – though they are silent.
Sleepless
and alone, I see
you will not be
a green body.
You were neither
a good master, to be bought,
nor the muse.
My longed for delirium, my memory.
The body of a bird in your mouth
breathing songs.
Raw light spills from your eyes,
utterly naked.
You must breach the horizon, once,
in order to wake up.
You must open window after window.
You must support the walls.
I let alphabets cling to me
as I climb the thread of language
between myself and the world.
I muster crowds in my mouth:
suspended between language and the world,
between the world and the alphabets.
I let my head
listen to the myth,
to all sides praising each other.
And I shout at the winds from the top of a mountain.
Why does my tongue tell me to climb this far?
What is the distance between my voice and my longing?
What is there?
A body transcending my body.
A body exiled by desire.
A body sheltered by the wind.
Your grandfather
strode erect as he drove his cattle
numbering his herds and his grain
His ancestors, master craftsmen,
the pride of Adam’s farm
strong as eagles
as wise as the raven
Your grandmother
prepared the garmasis – the bridal garment
precious heirloom of your mother
witness to her desire and your integrity –
that itself awaited
the drop of virgin blood
as she knelt
blessed with humility
blessing her bloodline
Is this his sacrificial altar?
Or the prayer mat of your grandmother?
I wince
whenever your name comes up
All ears, I seal my lips
keeping your secret a secret
(… Your mouth is ripe with desire
your eyes brim with tenderness
your body trembles as it calls… )
Anyone who mentions you cuts me to the quick,
and so I come to you in the heat of the noon
to whisper the story of dawn
You…
You…
My only creed!
I need the Word
like my ancestor’s need for stone and fire
like his need for an axe, for a spear, for a shield
like his need for the solace of a flute…
I enriched you
like life is enriched by day
like a wolf is enriched by a night with no moon
I enriched the longing for transcendence
I stayed neither to preach nor to barter with the skins of animals
I stayed to bear witness to the dignity of women enslaved
..
Wars consumed your remains
Their traces captivated your disciples
in thrall to your fierce charm
You taught me
You delivered me from ignorance
They think I am a king:
Yes, I am the King
All these wars
make the world unhomely
make homes rust apart
make you fall asleep, riddled with calamities
All this love
yet loneliness still cuts you to the bone
All this death
just so we can meet –
nothing more?
2
Write
to set the world ablaze
so poetry quickens in your hands
and inflames you with desire
Write, and wipe the slate
Infected by writing
you sweat in agony
from a bedsit
to the street and out into the wild
Write
in full knowledge
of everything that’s in your hands
both quill and string at your disposal
Write
certain of what electrifies the body
sure of how to rig the scene
3
This little world beneath you
made of boredom, balsawood and string
jerks between your fingers in a dream
Spirited away
you drink it in like scent
Are you scared of scorpions? Are you scared of blood?
Take refuge in the wings
But beware the spotlights, beware of being fingered
This little world beneath you
is here to give you all the answers
Is it worth the precious link that wrote it –
the cost of these fresh tears?
4
Light stings the page of your face
And it strikes her
as she dusts the faded wardrobe near the bed –
like a dagger, suddenly
it rends the dark
blazing with the whole world’s brilliance,
leaves her flushed,
spoored, wet
and flat out in astonishment
5
We latch on to bewilderment, to ink, and to departure
Living in our dreams, unfurling handkerchiefs,
we bring news to the bars of mirror and nausea,
smoke-rings, gossip, tales
From the oneness of white we plumb our ink,
from the oneness of all directions
Tears merge
Surprise arrives
All around you tombstones rise
6
Waiting in front of a door that’s behind you,
I watch it open with a rabab
so you can go back to the past with your spotless future,
refilling your boasts with light after they’d rotted through ashore,
restocking the wares of your mighty stories
like a bird refurbishing its nest
Those who went before you
live in a stupor,
their lanterns barging through your door
The flush of dawn
blackened
by the taint of dusk
Your face is familiar,
but what about the face in front of you
faced towards the door behind you?
. . . . . . as you go back to the past with your blameless future
7
The price of war: perpetual loyalty;
eschewing tomfoolery;
feigning naivety
The price of love: ceaseless quarrels
with the fathers of procedures
and the mothers of proficiency
The price of death: eternal life
in the grave of love and the theater of war
Life at the ends of obedience
Life at the end of the world