BIO
Maher Almaqousi is a Palestinian poet from Gaza. He was born in Gaza in 1972. He holds a Master’s degree in Civil Engineering, and is currently working on his doctorate degree. He is a member of Palestinian Writers Union. He has participated in a number of poetry festivals and readings in Palestine and other Arab countries including Sharjah Forum for Arabic Poetry in 2011. His poetry has been published in print and online Arab newspapers. He currently works as a project manager in Palestinian Communications Company. He has published one poetry collection titled Till the End of the Wind.
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I Apologize Now
I walk as I please
On the rust of the departing alphabets
I stir this long mirage
I call: O beloved
and apologize now
to the shriveled rose
.
They Called
The clouds are a forest for those who see the night through the morning’s hole
and water is the inkpot of elegies
They write: Dust is the key to the wounds
And on a sidewalk that has become so distant
their yesterday passed through the tale
It called and they called:
This path is still a virgin
that might be girdled with the winds
.
Wounds
Who will extend a hand
towards those wounds touched by the night
dark blue they are like my absent-mindedness
distressed and shaking?
Who will show a sail the direction of my longing?
When my night
is like the night of a seaport
in a tempest?
.
Who is it
The palm trees ask the farthest end of my blood
on the way
to the deferred death:
When you go wrapped
in your longing for the homeland
and for a woman,
who’ll illuminate the steps
along the paths
when all the visions
are extinguished?
.
Longing
Longing turned me
Into a soul searching for a body
I rise and fall like a moaning pendulum
in which eternity is incarnated
longing has become my beginning
to be a song
in the lips of a boy.
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