I freaked out when I read this, the kind of freaking out that results in hair pulling but currently my hair is too short to pull so I slapped myself hard to make sure I wasn’t dreaming…

Jordan’s Al-Dastour newspaper reports that the Department of Publications is taking Jordanian poet Ibrahim Nasrallah to court over his “Poetry Works” book for it’s “obvious legal incompatibility”. Note that the book has been in circulation in Jordan since 1984 (an Orwellian irony?). No one has complained about it until now!

What the hell!? I’ll have to voice my frustrations by borrowing two of Nasrallah’s poems

Poets

In that good and distant city
in a courtyard full of grass
all things sing
and everyone dances
He said: Go ask that filly to dance
I was shy
He said: If poets lose
the world will not gain

Freedom

Away from the flowerpots
and the scissors of the housewives
in the graveyards the rose bushes whisper:
More sadly — here — time passes
but the buds do not know fear