I wander in Gogol’s coat tirelessly reading the bridges. I hear the chilling cold of a ghostly Europe striding widely across ice. It is cruel freedom, cold, always. You looked intently at the barks of trees last night feeling the increasing weight of your feet in your shoes. You ponder deeply on how the foliage’s debris accounts for Autumn or how mud chronicles overcast clouds. Don’t fear the ghost that asks for your coat. He is usually freezing. Think of death as a German General looking with his blue eyes at the table then hobbling away. Cruel freedom.

The wave of air is still under the table
The hot cup of coffee
The burned-out cigarette on the edge of the ashtray
The lipstick-smeared tissue
My heart, its beatings audible from afar
That poem I thought of, but the other I wrote.

Amal Dunqul was born in Upper Egypt, and like many writers known as the Generation of the Sixties, migrated to Cairo from the countryside. He came to be known as the vagabond poet. He moved between cheap hotels and apartments, sharing with his artistic mates not only meager meals, but also taking turns wearing the only outfit they had for social and literary gatherings!1 Not surprisingly, Amal Dunqul became a legend in his own lifetime. He combined the traits of the poËte maudit with the passionate flare of the native son (ibn al-balad); He was undomesticated but loving, irreverent but honest, uncompromising but humane.

I said:
Let love be on earth, and it was not
Love was now possessed
By those who could afford the price
And God saw this was not good