Ali Al Hazmi (born 1970) is a Saudi poet and writer whose work has appeared widely in Saudi and Arab newspapers and cultural journals. Born in the Damad Governorate of Jazan Province, he studied Arabic language at Umm Al-Qura University in Makkah, graduating in 1992.
After completing his studies, he worked as a teacher while publishing poetry from the late 1980s onward and participating in literary events across the Arab world. He has released several poetry collections, including five major diwans, one of which was translated into Spanish. His poems have appeared in many languages, and he has received numerous Arab and international literary awards.

Loss

on the threshold of night
They await the passing of the last evening 
Their eyes filled with sorrow
They willingly forget themselves in the pathways of pains
Where mistaking them for the flames of estrangement
from hopes they left behind the path of time,
you would think they are drunk when they are sober
But the shock is even harder on a sprout
in the spring of their eyes
They did not wish for their wounds to leave their footsteps stolen at the very start of the path
where they stayed away from the blossoms of their days They rested to an exhausting exile that leafed out in
their chests

That’s how the losers do with their time
When it is finally time
When the last path heads nowhere in the face of night 
for they had shared everything 
And no words are left for them from the wine of 
speech to make a judgement 
For so their night didn't care about the screams 
coming from their memories 
behind the door of life 
Oh, how noble it would have been of their dreams 
to stay on paper 
in the closet

Tears Rolling down Her Salted Burning Lips

We were building sand homes near the coast
When he left for fishing, for the last time…
We raced to return the trimmings of his net
To his little canoe.

With little hands
We waved unceasingly to the last wave
That snatched his boat away,
Away from the times of our childhood.
***
Behind the window bars, our little heads squeezed;
With eyes fixed on the coast road;
Mother's wings spread over our little shoulders
As she injected her body among ours;
Immensely worried about our budding innocent souls.

Scared that her long hair may submit to the winds,
If she bent forward on the metal railing,
I drew her back towards the warmness of the timber room.
Then I stared at the seashores in her eyes,
And saw the sea travelling far beyond the sand homes.

"Sure, he will return," she said,
Before her tear floored upon my lips— mysalted burning lips.
Twenty years did not avail to demolish the sand homes
In our eyes.
The dried out face of my father laid upon the waves                     Became a 
window that looks at the silver years of our age;
An age abandoned in muddy traps.

Still, my beloved mother conceals her regrets behind her shadow.
Still, on the mornings,
She makes fresh bread with her dreams;
And at midnights,
She reheats what remains of her wishes on the stove of her soul.
Still, we believe her and eat the bread of her lie,
Just to live on.

A street through a wall

To be tormented by woman in your imagination
a woman created by your visions 
from illusions and emotinal pain.
To sleep blissfully on the thorns of her laughter 
To see her, with your eyes closed, roaming through the deserts 
Of your ruin
To let her weave leisurely, leisurely
the snares of her charm around your neck
to feel the light ealls of her footsteps 
coming slowly towards your night
To watch her levity as she goes  up like butterflies
towards a bank in the blaze of your bed 
To accompany her to the sky,s distant limits
When she passes the feathers of her hand over freckles
climbing the sighs of your chest
To encircle her like a dove 
with your arms in binding longing
To cover the hems of her desire 
With the unruliness of your horses till the break of dawn.
***
A woman who, carelessly , split up your life dream
into two, halves,
cut with her gaze street
through the wall of your confusion,
hammered the nail of her picture, forcibly, into
the head of your imagination,
a woman who couldn,t  leave the walls of your delusion
***
Her only guilt was to smile one dey,
by the sidewalk, at a guy in front of her,
whom you blocked out, unintentionally,
by standing between them.
You kept gazing at her, with a prolonged desire,
You weren't aware that your standing was delaying 
a spacious bosom would open its arms in the wind
to take her away from you
after a little while.

She Lost the Keys to Her Desire

A lonely woman
Struggling with the whip of autumn
With hands so bare
Of luck, family, and friends
The autumn which kept creeping over 
trees she hid 
away from the passers

How she fears the past,
and a dream that doesn’t visit her sleep twice.
Whenever she fences with the little of her hands
the butterflies of a dawn waving at her,
the palm of absence
went fading her shadows in the wind

She no longer cares
about the goldfinches fleeing of the dimness of her terrace
Life has taught her to bend away 
from the joyfulness of her femininity, so soon
to not reach for the ripe fruit
On the branches of the body
To not try to awaken her shivers
At the fall of night..
She lost the keys to her desire
In the long await with which she consoles the bird
That bleeds from her soul

With hollow eyes
So empty of warmth, love, and hopes
She keeps rowing down an empty river
Surrounding her loneliness at the brink of night,
willingly
She surrenders herself to the ill exile
Without a single glimpse to the flute that lulls
the embers of her fires 
from the distance 

A long night passes
on the metallic silence of her solitude
The pains that gaze into mirrors
looks on her dream pouringly
There’s no clear meaning 
to this headache dwelling in her head
For autumn has ended
And the morning of butterflies 
Is about to regain its footsteps
to a bank far at the end of the coos 

And there’s nothing preventing the river 
From tracking the passage of her anklet
On the nearby hills!

Could she desire to praise the eye of the distant again?! 
Could she weave from the sun a shawl for her cold femininity,

From a new dawn?!

Take Me to My Body

A woman said to the traveler: Take me to the sea,
There, I was born on the passion of the waves
The winds carry me on a journey
Of which I recall nothing but expatriation
Propagating in the wasteland of my soul,
No longer does my need for a little luck
Aid me with more patience
To toss the embers of my long delay

A boy says to a girl tucking her fingers 
Under the buttons of his jacket pouringly
Let my desire in your crowdedness
Float a little on the surface of the water
For the sea is wasting our chance
Of finding refuge in a nostalgic wreath we weaved
In cheerful nights,
Embrace me longer for those embraces lull
our singes awaiting the distant,
let my candle in my absence die and light 
with the longing of lovers the dimness of this night,
He knew 
The sky would rain again
In the absence of his hands… and he didn’t wait!
I fear the sea… 
You, like me, fear the sea?!
And it is the flute of nature, the plains of longing,
The refuge of the universe!
I fear the sea for you, the shore eroding under its feet in all seasons
We will be weary, I told you yesterday:
Take me to my body … we repose!
We will be weary, if the coasts rain us
With the thirst salient in its silence,
We will be weary, if the distance fence us
In this metallic apathy, and the dream became for us
Further than a vine in the hands

Seamen asking about the sea!
How could they retreat to its saltiness
After all those years! 
What is left for them in its waters
Except the glistening of seaweeds and the bitter exhaustion?!

The far lands that faded their strive
Breaking the paddles of their desires
No longer look back 
To the fires of their stares whenever they ask
About the wind: What did it want
From directing the helm of their journey towards languish?
Those going to the sea lose
All the pearls of their souls altogether 
When they leave the suns of their joyfulness
In the eyes of their loved ones
The dominance of the salt is being too harsh 
On the soul’s gull as it passes the shore in petulance
And responds to a safety swarm 
Looming on the water’s body
Lightly.

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Translation from Arabic into English by Dr. Hamdi Al Jaberi.