Translation into English by Maha Tawfik

Travel Pass

By Ahmed Shablool Translation by Maha Mostafa Tawfik 

I adore your streets, straightforward as a lifetime

I love the cafes…

with tables opening up to the sea's iodine

I sit on the rocks…

That have drunk the humidity of shellmagic

I walk inside all of the months

and the seasons' nectar reverberates inside me

This is January…

which takes away my stranger's frost

and throws it under my clothes

and this, April…

offers my lips the spring of the encounter

and that, August…

clears away all that estrangement in my heart

November, the despot summons my youth

and galloping over my arms

weeks of chrysanthemum

and of jasmine

And in every doorway…

the waves of yearning meow

I love the streets when they intersect with our dreams

And run to the quiescent beach

to freeze its sand

And inflame its groans

your streets now come out between our pain

and spread, spread like floods

killing the darkness inside us

and flowing to their beginning

here… in my eyes

a road leads to its ending

a road flanked by pearls and songs

Oh sea!

grant that poem your vision

I have gained warmth from your frost

from your wrinkled coast, imagination

magic from the rose of the depths,

from the rock of these corals, greenness

and from your bathing salt, food

… I have what you have…

so in streets be a child

singing to the dawn of life

be a father to the orphans

and to those who are lost, a path

and a fetus to barren women

be a city to me

whose streets I intersect

and love the cafes

whose courageous citadel I hug

and walk inside all of the months

without a travel pass.