Poems of Reema Hamza (Syria)

Reema Hamza (Syria)
PhD in Philosophical Sciences Graduate of the Higher Institute of Music, specialization (Violin)


▪️Editor at Daily Global Nation Newspaper,
member of the International Advisory Board at Versala Academy - Greece - Athens, First Deputy and Chairman of the Board at Sirius Platform - Germany - and Rasif 81 Magazine.
Editor-in-Chief of the
Culture World Newspaper

▪️She write in various literary genres including classical poetry, free verse poetry, prose poems, essays, and the art of storytelling.

▪️Four poetry collections in the form of prose poems have been published by me, and she has a novel currently in the process of printing.

▪️She has worked in the literary field as an administrator and editor for many reputable platforms and newspapers.

▪️Her poetry collections have been addressed by a select group of unique academic critics across the Arab world, and her poems have been published in prestigious Arab magazines and newspapers such as Kuwait's Al-Qabas, Al-Dustour, and Al-Sharjah Al-Thaqafiya, as well as in many international websites and newspapers from countries like Italy, Albania, Belgium, Bangladesh, Kosovo, Spain, etc.

▪️Her poems have been translated into several languages including Italian, Albanian, Spanish, French, and English.
▪️Her poem "Improvisations on a Near Dawn" has been translated into five languages and published in international newspapers.

▪️She participated in the International Encyclopedia Anthology of Poets of Love and Peace and in an Arabic poetic encyclopedia titled Arabic Women's Letters.


▪️She participated in the book "Arab Women's Letters," which includes creative women from the Arab world, published by Al-Sanabel Publishing House.

▪️She has won many valuable
literary awards and creative honors.

▪️She contributed to a literary encyclopedia titled: Oasis of Creativity, a book featuring Arab creatives, published by the General Establishment for Al-Nil and Al-Furat in its first and second parts.

▪️She also participated in the book (The First Drop of Rain) by Dr. researcher Amani Ibrahim, published by the same institution.

▪️A book of critical studies addressing my texts and creative experience was published by the Palestinian critic Rania Fouad Marjeh.


▪️She participated with my poems in the fourth volume of the book "Mandib," affiliated with the Mandib International Foundation in India.



When Men Cry
Reema Hamza

Men do cry…
And when they do, the sky seems to fall,
as though it fears the wind
might bruise the silence.
Their tears—weightier than wounds
that bleed beneath the skin
cleanse the stains of time
and pour like a cascade
of noble pain.
They cry when memory raises before them
the face of a slain man
who never found a shroud,
or the lament of a mother
whose voice dissolved
behind the bars of forgetting.
They cry when the scent
of a long-gone beloved rises again,
and the braids of sorrow
sweep across the shoulders of the horizon.
It is a weeping
that inscribes upon the page of night
the testament of the pure:
that justice has yet to be born,
and that sorrow, for men,
is a homeland
none can rival them in.




From East to East
Reema Hamza

In the illusion of the pupil,
the hooves of their wooden horses
plowed the water of distance
neighing, foaming,
like poems ringing through the marketplace of Okaz¹.
Light fell upon their faces,
and water wrote them into verse.
In the hush of a question,
Narcissus², lost in his reflection,
put on a shirt of terror for our meeting
until the mirrors grew weary,
replaying their fear of faces.
And we
we multiplied questions and firewood.
In a frenzied race,
close enough to the brink of falling,
the harlot of virtuous truth
descended from her Hamza³ throne
and betrayed her blue tattoo.
Language dangled from its grammatical ropes,
and meaning—our heads
stretched like a national poem,
fit for every blood.
Our names
became advertisements for resurrection.
In the shadow,
the curse of Amun⁴ sat by the murmur’s edge,
asking:
How can I extinguish the sun
so leisurely in the shade?
She took the wax and the matches from our hands,
struck our fingers—
and the shadow too
caught fire,
devouring our hands like matchsticks.
In the mill,
the stone made no distinction
between the roundness of a tear
and the roundness of the letter N.
So the wheat
committed suicide in its brown silence.
All things equalized in their grinding,
and fertility became a hoarse voice,
turning, turning—never arriving.
In the mill:
the whole tale,
and no tale at all.
Since thought walked
on the edge of a knife,
the groan broke past
the barricade of red wounds.
The horse is costly,
the girls are made of paper,
and the wound
writes you in its own hand
with all the expectations of pain,
and rhymes thickened
by the poetry of bleeding.
Here,
the eloquence of tropical rain
washed the jester’s face.
All carnivals of words
fell in their masquerade costumes.
The embellishment of masks,
the metaphors with bound hands
the poem’s face,
a slaughtered she-camel.
From East to East,
language fell to its knees,
and a dawn without arms
took charge.
Our tales—
a spear embedded
in the back of loss.
We wound it, and it wounds us.
Night emptied yesterday’s pockets
to the northern winds.
Each time life spelled its name,
death grew green upon its lips.
Only it was just:
those who had not witnessed
the furnace of war
were refunded the price of the ticket.
Cities combed through their ruins
with the comb of a withered dawn.
Shadows grew weary of their expansion,
rested for a moment in history
then forced us
into new loss.

Footnotes
¹ Okaz — The ancient pre-Islamic Arab marketplace renowned for its poetry contests and eloquence, symbolizing the cultural cradle of Arabic oratory and verse.

² Narcissus — The Greek mythological figure who fell in love with his reflection; here, a metaphor for self-obsession and existential fragmentation.

³ Hamza — The first letter of the Arabic alphabet (ء), symbolically linked to the primordial voice and the origin of utterance; in this poem, it suggests the fall of sacred language.

⁴ Amun — An ancient Egyptian deity associated with creation and hidden power; his "curse" evokes the shadow of divinity and the blindness of

......................


What if the questions invited you to dance?
Reema Hamza

What if
the sun bore no interpretation, and the tone of your wings was wax?
Would you indulge in poetry, and the fragments of hope?
Would you give a  lifetime to tame a wave?
What if bewilderment submerged you, until you reached a freedom hued in the wind’s own color?
On what would you wager—your wounds, your horses of blind joy?
What if
poverty assaulted poverty,
to restore its vanished kingdom in the Andalusia of the absurd?
Keep for your dream its intonation,
lest its ashes take the shape of a joke.
And what if
you renounced your love letters?
Would the palms cut their hair before the mirrors of your vanity?
Bring the lilies-and
shroud the body of the poem, or (...).
What if
your lightning withheld pardon from the treachery of thunder?
And your madness galloped like a wild horse?
Would you authorize the assassination of suns?
Would you chant the maqām of fog?
And what, what, what if
you were entangled in the sedition of the Caliph’s Gate?
The auction of faith is but an ancient scripture
Would you legalize the slaughter of fields?
Would you plead for the rain to be withheld?
I buried within the hollow of my palm a single if,
and the plague it carried,
Untill my fingers blossomed with manifold joys.
But alas,
the nectar of each flower that bloomed from what if
returned to play once more in the sigh,
and in the poem.