I Want To Stay- لعلي أسعى أجيد البناء (day 64)

هذه الأجواء لي فيها حياة
ظلام و ظلم حتى الفناء حتى الممات
برد وطرد من البيوت حتى الوفات
أجدت الدخول من النافذات
و إعتدت الطعام على الطرقات
وذات مساء وفي عاصفة
وكنت هنا تائها خائفا
وثلج وماء يغطي المكان
ورعد وبرق فأين الأمان
أتى الموت حولي وضل يحوم
يقول لي حان وقت الذهاب
عد واختبئ خلف تلك الغيوم-
فلست إلى الآن أنوي الذهاب
ألفت الصراع ألفت العذاب
ابعدك ألقى طريقا طويلا
تعال معي فما أنت فيه-
عذاب يدوم وموة طويل
أموت طويلا ولا أذهب-
وليس لأني أريد البقاء
ولكنني أعرف المنتهى
فداري هناك رديء البناء
بقائي هنا فرصت للبناء
وها أنت ذا رغم أني نسيتك
فدعني أعيش حياتي التعيسة
كفى دعني أبقى أريد البقاء
كفى دعني أبقى أخاف الفناء
كفى دعني أبقى أريد البقاء
لعلي أسعى أجيد البناء


source

This is where I've been living:
Darkness and unfairness until my death,
Cold and exile until I give my last breath.
I'm good at entering through windows
I'm used to eating in the streets
One evening, during a storm,
I was here, lost and afraid.
Snow and water were covering the place,
So much thunder and lightning, no trace of safety.
Death approached me and kept spinning around me
Saying: "It's time to go."
-Go back and hide behind those clouds!
I don't intend to go, just yet.
I'm used to my misery now.
After you I'll go through a long path.
-Come with me, what you are living
Is a long lasting torture, and a slow death.
-I would rather die slowly than go now.
Not because I want to stay,
But I know where this ends.
My home up there is not well built.
If I stay here I have a chance
To make up for that and do better.
Let me live my miserable life.
Stop. Let me stay. I want to stay.
Stop. Let me stay. I'm afraid of dying.
Stop. Let me Stay. I want to stay.
I would try to fix things if I could stay.

Last year I went to a camp with a book club. There was a writing workshp where they asked us to write a text, in a limited periode of time, about either fantasm (as in sexual fantasm) or fear and then read it around the camp fire at night.

Obviously I chose fear. I asked myself what do I fear the most. And it was, not death itself, but dying before fixing a lot of things in my life. I do belive in after-life and I think it's easy to be prepared for it. So it's my worst fear to die before doing that "easy task". And that's where this poem came from.

Being the rhyme and rythm freak that I was/am, I couldn't help making it a rhyming poem that most of it follows the rythm of Tunisia's national hymn lol which is one of the most famous rythms in the old arabic poetry. Of course that was lost in translation.

I translated it today for the 64th day of the 100 days of poetry challenge.

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