Sayyed Darwish Singing “Ana Hawet Wintihet”

(Listening to Sayyed Darwish with C.P. Cafavy in mind)

The Mediterranean, fluttering in ships and fables at ports and cities,
dwelled Alexandria´s shores from where roads forked out
into the countryside, not declared lost, yet not the comeback land.
In Alexandria, while breakfasting, with no blood cauterizing their hands,
they issued no queries about the absent land.
Their souls hovered parallel to walls shining with the puff of past energy.

O that, their time of living on the backside of calamity.
Songs of slow love, descended on their days of youth;
threatened days were they despite the hope of capturing the desired eyes.
And those eyes, as their heat was pacified, turned dark,
inhabited with an urge to start love anew,
to repeat until bodies are equalized at their state of momentary paralysis,
in the presence of the beloved.

The sea and its volcanoes at Alexandria,
omnipresent, even within the narrow hideouts
where immature but dense kisses were snatched.
They longed for those kisses, sinfully obtained
during an epoch when they voyaged like poor beasts,
and their minds simulated flights over water and sand,
sensing humidity, the edible touch of lips.

They became heralds of good news, and of others they hated
about famine, wars, profuse plants withering in the dark,
and their painful desire to return, that energy sipping parasite.
Across the lands, voices expanded and called:
No other day will bring this refuge again. Here is the feast, the last day and hour...
Let leaves and branches bring you the taste of the poet´s and singer´s days;
those recluses and hermits who asserted,
"At last, love is standing its ground against its hidden killers."

*) Sayyed Darwish (Alexandria 1892 - Alexandria 1923) - Egyptian singer and composer, father of Egyptian and Arab popular music. “Ana Hawet Wintihet” (I have loved, and it is now over) is one of his famous songs.
**) Constantine Petrou Cavafy (Alexandria 1863 - Alexandria 1933) – Greek-Egyptian poet, father of modern Greek poetry.

Listen to the song by Sayyed Darwish