In Transition: World History, Politics & Current Affairs. Forum Saddam Hussein - A Poet?

From Hussein, A Florid Farewell to the Iraqi People - NYT 1/4/07
Hussein Poem: Baathists Bloom, Enemy Is Hollow
The New York Times

Following is the first half of a poem attributed to Saddam Hussein [ during his last days ], as transcribed and translated by The New York Times from a reading by his cousin Muayed Dhamin al-Hazza.

Unbind It

Unbind your soul. It is my soul
����mate and you are my soul�s
����beloved.
No house could have sheltered
����my heart as you have
If I were that house, you would
����be its dew
You are the soothing breeze
My soul is made fresh by you
And our Baath Party blossoms
����like a branch turns green.
The medicine does not cure the
����ailing but the white rose does.
The enemies set their plans and
����traps
And proceeded despite the fact
����they are all faulty.
It is a plan of arrogance and
����emptiness
It will prove to be nothing but
����defeated
We break it as rust devours steel
Like a sinner consumed by his
����sins
We never felt weak
We were made strong by our
����morals.
Our honorable stand, the
����companion of our soul,
The enemies forced strangers
����into our sea
And he who serves them will be
����made to weep.
Here we unveil our chests to the
����wolves
And will not tremble before the
����beast.
We fight the most difficult
����challenges
And beat them back, God willing.
How would they fare under such
����strains?
All people, we never let you down
And in catastrophes, our party is
����the leader.
I sacrifice my soul for you and
����for our nation
Blood is cheap in hard times
We never kneel or bend when
����attacking
But we even treat our enemy
����with honor....

There are poets that are monsters and monsters that are poets it seems. The first thing that came to mind when reading this was when they unearthed some letters by Philip Larkin that proved him to be an out and out racist. With the poets we ask does their political view affect how we see them and and their work -- and it has to; once you have the information in your head you can't get it out. With Saddam perhaps this does provide us with a new way to frame how we see him -- perhaps not. I was talking to a friend recently and I said isn't it more scary that he might be a normal human being who was being perfectly rational in what he did? If he is a monster then he is not like us. Perhaps if the poetry allows us to see his humanity we might learn something about ourselves and also gain insight into what could make a man like him do the things which he has done.

A little boy died immitating the Saddam Hussein hanging, I refuse to read anything that has anything to do with that evil man, who kills even after he has passed.

this probably reads as crap because it's a translation. i don't have any idea from this of s.h. as a poet. one thing possible is that he had it ghost written... muraahhhahhhahhh... some old poet floating in the eurphrates after it was written.

everyone's so "hee can't be no poet cause hee's" and that's childish. everyone of us is fukked someway, and killed a cockroach when the light went on. to a buddist, i'm not what i think i am -- and neither is my thought of s.h. what i think it is about.

arabic and english poetry will survive after arabic and english have died out... nobody's going to even know how to find my social security number when dorkville's covered with sand. same in bagdad and s.h... there's no way i can know this poet in this poem.

confusion? read the times or something and you'll be happy.

very interesting to read.... but it wasn't surprising that his poetry reads like the rhetoric of a dictator spilling onto the masses

can you make the source available, a link perhaps? That's something I'd like to verify

It's always scary and disheartening to find out that the most evil men in the world were just people. We're reminded all the time and yet we're always amazed by it.

As for the poem it reminded me of Patriotic lyrics from the Mao Songbook, or the Kim Il Jong (sp?) Songbook. Not as in your face, but I guess even Saddam realized that there wasn't much of a Baath party to bind your soul to anymore.

All in all, creepy stuff from an intolerable human being.

I guess this shows that even a person who has been surrounded by evil for his full life is still capable of poetic thought.

if you read the poem though it is a movement to justify himself in politics and serves as a political instrument.

We should have had him on the site! Too late now I guess!

I liked it. If he did write it, it shows him to be a thoughtful man. Not thoughtful in the way you try to help people. He did gas the Kurds. But that wasn't vapid. I refuse to accept that a dictator can't think eloquent thoughts. Especially since we kind of gave him his job. When we fire someone... we do it texas style. No severence pay. Straight to execution. God Bless America.

Oh yeah...
Art is art.