AWEJ. Special Issue on Translation No.3 May, 2014 Pp. 254-255
Poetry
Bags
Shihab M. Ghanem
United Arab Emirates
People
Are like bags
But with hands, legs and heads.
And people
Are like bags
But eyes, ears, and senses
If you peel two women:
One of the great beauty
And the other uglier than a demon
You will see in front of you two frighten females.
If you peel white men
And black man
They will all look similar
What is the difference then, between people.
Or say between bags?
The telling difference is in the souls,
And in the minds,
And in feelings.
But people ..
Are bankrupt .
Always chacing bags.
About the Poet:
Dr. Shihab M. Ghanem is an Emirati poet, translator of poetry, engineer, manager, and economist. B.Sc. (Eng.) Aberdeen 1964, M.E. (Water Resources Dev.) (Roorkee, 1975), ph.d. (Cardiff, Wales, 1989). Director of Engg. Dubai Ports & Jebel Ali Free Zone, and Managing Director Mohammad bin Rashid Technology Park, (retired). Published 55 books including 24 collections of translated poems, half of them from Arabic to English and half from various languages to Arabic. Received many awards including Tagore Peace Award 2012, UAE Cultural Personality of the Year, 2013, World Poetry Award for Culture & Humanism, Chennai 2013.