Faik, Salah: A Winged Horse in a Plane

Translated by Maged Zaher. Tinfish Press (chapbook, 2015)

Publisher Marketing: In his brief preface to A Winged Horse in a Plane, Maged Zaher writes of Salah Faik: “Salah is against all authorities, including his own: he reinvents himself incessantly and he told me, ‘if I saw Salah Faik I would devour him, I would kill him.’” Faik’s poems waver between the documentary and the surrealist, the angry and the resigned, the lyrical and the mythical. This chapbook provides an excellent introduction to an important Arab poet.

 
Excerpt: Searching for my soul in daytime

I always live near a river, like my ancestors,

Recently by an ocean, behind me mountains or hills.

In these waters everyone bathes – bulls, cows, dogs,

Humans, wild horses that are not yet tamed, late arriving priests

Pulling carts that hold their drums.

It might be said that I live in a past time, that I am a little romantic

With big ambitions, yet no:

I’m still lying in bed, imagining that I will write a poem today.

I will write and write until I get to my soul and touch it–

Since I do not see it at night

And I do not know where it disappears or goes.

That’s all.