Forty Days after my Dad

Forty days after my Dad

Rifaat Youssef-Agha (1920-2014)

Oh my eye, be generous with tears

As the one with the big heart and generosity has gone

Sorrow has left scars on our hearts

And tears have left grooves on our cheeks

If sadness was a vine, we would fill

Baskets of ripe grape, cluster above cluster

We wouldn’t pay him back even if we place

All the flowers of the world on his grave

How great the days of childhood in Dad’s house were

Oh those days, how much we wish you to come back

Oh our house, we immigrated and left you behind

You fulfilled your promises to us, but we betrayed you

***

Today marks forty days since dad left

Forty days during which the tears never left our eyes

With each drop of tear we released

The eyelids bow down in respect to his memory

Oh grave, be gentle with a guest who was,

In his lifetime, called the compassionate

Don’t be hard on him

As his final days and aging were

Oh Burial day, how hard it is on sons when they have to carry

Their parents to the graveyards and return without them

But it is a road everyone will walk

All of us, on that road, are walking

***

A Poem translation

(Can be shared without permission)

By Tarif Youssef-Agha

An Expatriate Arab Syrian Writer & Poet

Sunday March 9, 2014

Houston, Texas

My Dad passed away in Jeddah, KSA, the afternoon of Wednesday January 29, 2014, 3 days after I arrived from the USA to support him in his illness.

http://sites.google.com/site/tarifspoetry