Poems of Muhammad Gaddafi Masoud (Libiya)

                                                   Muhammad Gaddafi Masoud

Translation by Dr . Salwa Goda

The poet

Muhammad Gaddafi Masoud (known as Abu Salah), born in 1978 in Gharyan, Libya, holds a theater diploma from Tripoli’s Jamal Al-Din Al-Miladi Institute (2000) and is the author of several collections, including lyrical poetry (We Woke Up to Joy, 2006) and journalistic dialogues (My Dialogues with Them, 2008). Widely published across the Arab world, his work has been translated into numerous languages—English, Chinese, Spanish, Polish, French, Italian, and Albanian—and appeared in international print and online journals from Spain to Argentina. In 2024, he was selected as one of 72 global poets for an Italian-language anthology curated by Angela Costa, reflecting his broadening transnational literary presence.

The translator

Dr Salwa Gouda is an accomplished Egyptian literary translator, critic, and academic affiliated with the English Language and Literature Department at Ain Shams University. Holding a PhD in English literature and criticism, Dr. Gouda pursued her education at both Ain Shams University and California State University, San Bernardino. She has authored several academic works, including Lectures in English Poetry and Introduction to Modern Literary Criticism, among others. Dr. Gouda also played a significant role in translating The Arab Encyclopedia for Pioneers, a comprehensive project featuring poets, philosophers, historians, and literary figures, conducted under the auspices of UNESCO. Recently, her poetry translations have been featured in a poetry anthology published by Alien Buddha Press in Arizona, USA. Her work has also appeared in numerous international literary magazines, further solidifying her contributions to the field of literary translation and criticism.

Leave the Crook

Put down that shepherd's crook,

you with the polished air.

Stop your circling,

your blind stumbles

out of the dream.

That stick you wave

at a flock of children,

making a holy vow

that only blooms

when your tragedy peaks.

You weave your cloak from a people's faith,

stitching sunbeams to pretty lies.

When you're lost in ecstasy,

the desert shows you its face

and I make it into dreams,

so you can offer a rose

to the era that never saw you born.

Nothing promises you anything.

You're past the end.

No fantasy holds you up,

no color hides you.

You don't need a hiding cap,

you need a helmet.

Your reflection has changed,

and being different has made you

a slippery, mercury question.

Oh, child of the Boundless.

Ghosts Coming Home

A question plants its roots

deep in the dirt,

grows in the rain of being far from home.

My heart calls out to its own beat

until I hit the point

where a mountain of trouble gives way.

I come back, wanting a meeting

set in the frame of "never can be,"

whispering to the strings of feeling,

spinning glances from threads.

Every time I grit my teeth and step toward it,

stride confident,

I try to catch a moment that time washes away,

yanked back by a wire of fear,

laughed at by how things are.

Like the road to Jerusalem,

the road to you feels impossible.

In my town, suspicions

are sharp tongues.

Love's ghosts come home

carrying disappointments.

For you, my heart drifts in daydreams,

looking for a nest bullets can't find,

a road where the poet meets

a rose named Fatima.

Her nails are short, won't scratch what's proper,

her tongue is soft,

dripping honey-words.

Nothing in front of me, nothing behind.

All the talking's done...

just silver linings of sadness.

No sweetheart do I trust

who's fluent in every tongue.

Every time the sun comes close,

I fail to catch a ride on my own shadow.

A Tendril Cut with Sighs

Who put you in my world,

a beautiful lie?

Who dressed you in tempting questions,

stirred you up in a storm

until you became an appointment

spread across my eyelid,

heavy from no sleep,

my pink-cheeked child?

How can your face be level with the sun,

you who are other people's sin?

When you roar inside their quiet

and they show the fangs of their goodness.

You make tears ring through my streets,

climb my peace

with a light, ambitious trick.

You put on the wound

so the hurt in you hits its peak,

your own veins cut their arteries,

you cry hot coals,

you hide in my silence,

hoping it gives you a tendril

cut down with sighs.

On the House's Hip

We write on the house's hip:

We are here.

We chew on the street's loneliness

'til the alley turns

into a moon on the soul's shoulder.

The wind's wound...

you tell it like a secret.

Lightning drinks its glass,

and we drink down the question.

Sparrows soften the bitter cold.

What's the point of staying...?

The olive tree left it to the windows

to tell what's left

of the shouting inside us,

tossing it in the grinder.