| I will seek the roads and taverns, I am the blind poet | or her dress thrown on the Tunisian rug? Layla makes everything smell of cloves |
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| Layla leaves me sleeping, rocking between clouds and cloves | He is the author of over 30 books of poetry, including Nostalgia, My Enemy, translated by Sinan Antoon and Peter Money 2012 ; Without an Alphabet, Without a Face: Selected Poems, translated by 2002 ; and 51 Poems 1958 |
Layla feels that my fingers are numb, over the dunes she knows my pulse is hers, my water is hers.
14| I ask about you but as a stung man does after something has afflicted his blood | Layla knows now that I am drunk with the scent of cloves, she stiches together my clouds and then scatters them together in a sky like a sheet as she clasps me |
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| Youssef lives in London, where he is a leading translator of English literature into Arabic | Saadi Youssef is considered one of the most important contemporary poets in the Arab world |