Winter Has Come...

Recited at Queen Aliya College in the poetry competition held by the College of Arts and Sciences, in which the College of Law, the College of Commerce, the College of Arts and Sciences, and Queen Aliya College took part. This poem won the first prize.

Winter has come, and my heart said: welcome to its madness,
and to its wild winds that storm its stillness of a sudden,
and to its clouds flushed crimson on the wing of its enchantment,
and to its rapturous blaze, dancing and singing its melodies.

*

Winter has come, and a weary sleep has crept through the trees,
and the flowers have swooned away, sighing from excess of grief,
and the sparrow stirs restlessly, gazing dejected, despairing,
and night, draped in its veil of darkness, goes stumbling on.

*

O cold, your hands have never ceased to deal deliberate cruelty:
you draw near and wring the life out of bodies, and they lie still,
while in our depths a blazing fire flares up —
what ails your fire, that whenever we kindle its glow it dies away?

*

O cold, you are like death in shudder and in stillness:
you steal in, and the veins tremble and feel no existence.
How many a pauper complains to you, and still you are unrelenting,
and the core of your heart remains, through all the ages, ice.

*

O heavy of step, do not tread on the precious flowers;
be gentle — do not put out, with these breaths, a fire still burning;
do not freeze the sweet water rippling along the channel,
and leave the sowers' fields — if only you could feel — just as they are.

*

I love, when winter comes, the storms and the clouds,
and I wander entranced when they rage, and when the cloudbanks hide the stars,
in a mute darkness where stillness dwells, enfolding it,
where even a whisper may grow hoarse, trembling with grief, stifled.

*

O cold, how sweet your sky, sparkling blue!
O cold, how pure your snows, glittering in the gloom!
O cold, how hard your heart, showing no mercy to mankind!
Strange, your tears — how is it they fall shimmering with pity?
So when we accept your torment, yearning, burning,
we hope for spring — and already it beats in every heart.

Fatina al-Naib
Baghdad: Queen Aliya College