I dove into Saadi Youssef’s work in the early nineties. Before then, his name had rung a bell that I did not know what to associate with. When I began to read Youssef’s work attentively, my impression was that it was akin to a revelation, the sort of poetry that I was waiting for, a quieter, more engaging poetry whose only argument is the poet’s experience of life. This is what I saw, this is how things smelled and felt and tasted. It was a disarming sort of poetry that I had not encountered in Arabic or anywhere else when I was just becoming interested in poetry. At that time, translation was the great siren beckoning and luring me toward Arabic poetry and, in the process, making me “practice” poetry more, in the same way that a violinist practices their instrument by playing the music of better and better composers.

Translating Youssef’s work made us friends. He was hesitant at first but believed in the work because I was committed to it. I used to mail him snail-mail letters, to a PO Box in Jordan, to which he promptly replied. I used to also call a number in Amman when he seemed to disappear. It turned out to be a number at the Ministry of Tourism. I never figured out the connection. And despite becoming great friends once he settled in London, I never found out.

Youssef was easy to work with because, for one thing, he knew English well. But more importantly, he was also a translator, and he appreciated the effort of translation. He made very few comments on my translations and allowed me to choose what I liked from among his poems. I felt free and supported by a great poet. The poems in this selection are from Youssef’s last decade of writing. I wanted to return to him to honor his work but also to share with the English-reading world the work of a true and diligent master of poetry.