This is the first piece I’m going to publish online of what I’m going to call my “hyper-literals.”
This is a translation form / verse type that I first made to translate into English phrases or expressions phrases from Tamil (one of the languages I grew up speaking) that I found beautiful, but whose beauty I couldn’t always find a way to fully represent in standard translation.
The verse form essentially attempts a morpheme-by-morpheme translation from a source language into something English-intelligible, using exclusively English vocabulary.
Growing up in Kuwait, with a substantial Egyptian diaspora, I heard Tamally Maak played on street constantly, throughout my childhood. I always considered it a deeply touching song and a beautiful tune, one that is explicitly modern while still preserving the true, tender, lovingly aflame heart of Arabic poetry that I admire in the great poet-sage’s of Islamic antiquity (I think of Ibn ‘Arabi in particular).
Translation
1. Always (I am) with-you if even (you are) far from-me, in heart-my love-yours (is) 1 2. Always with-you, always in mind-my and in heart-my, and-no ever-always-I-forget-you2 3. Always (I feel you) absent-me, if-no even ever-always-I-be-with-you 4. (CHORUS) Always beloved-my, ever-always-pine-I-for-you; always eyes-my call-for-you, even if surroundings-my all the-world (is), O beloved-my (I) need-for-you 5. Always with-you, with-you heart-my (is), with-you soul-my (is), O more-beloved (than all)5, O more-beloved (than all) 6. And however you-be far from-me, to-heart-my (you are) close 7. O lifetime-my 3, the-coming and the-existing4, O more-beautiful (than all) fate 8. (CHORUS) Always beloved-my, ever-always-pine-I-for-you; always eyes-my call-for-you, even if surroundings-my all the-world (is), O beloved-my (I) need-for-you
Notes
1 Starting out, to ease the reader into the form, I’ve chosen to include parenthetical copulas. A copula is a linking verb, one can associates two elements together. The copula in English is most often the verb “to be.” In English, (French, Spanish etc) we would say “Yeshaya is cool / Yeshaya est cool / Yeshaya es cool”. Arabic (and Tamil etc), an explicit copula can be added for clarity but is most often left out in regular speech. Something like “Yitzchak cool”
2 Here I made the choice to translate Masri’s non-present habitual marker (b’-) as “always-ever”. While ‘always-’ would act as a good habitual marker for a strict future tense, and ‘ever-’ would act as a good habitual marker for a strict present tense, I chose to concatenate the two to preserve the ambiguity of the non-present tense.
A standard translation here would have required me to collapse the ambiguity of the non-present tense into either the present or the future tense. Even though in most situations context allows for a clear choice to be made when translating into English, this line is a good example in which preserving the ambiguity allows for a deeper poetic reading. Is he stating that he is currently choosing never to forget his beloved, or is he choosing to never forget her in the future? Perhaps both? Perhaps something in the middle? Isn’t it lovely that, since the source text doesn’t make a choice, the translation doesn’t have to either?
3 The word in the original Egyptian is “omr,” which actually more literally translates to “age.” For example, if you ask someone how much their omr is, that would be you asking how old they are.
So where most translations would translate it as “my life” I write “lifetime-my” in order to preserve that temporal aspect and also to reflect the fact that the morpheme that indicates possession is added to the word as a suffix in Masri and most dialects of Arabic (that I know of… gulp)
On a poetic note, I like how it opens the translation to a reading that hold the idea of the time of one’s life is what’s valuable, not some more abstract idea that one still happens to be alive. “My life” isn’t worth (to me lol) as much if I’m going to die the next second (so hopefully I don’t <3).
4 Here is where so many translation would just translate it as “ the future and the present” or, which would be worse, by enforcing English’s preferred ordering “The present and the future”.
The reason I chose to write it as “the-coming and the-existing” is because in Masri, the words are both active noun participles, essentially something like English’s gerund construction “-ing”. Translating it this way allows the idea of the present and the future to feel more active, as things that are actively occurring, either actively arriving from the once-future or choosing to actively exist in the present. As someone who loves stuffing his prose with active verbs to give phrases a feeling of continuing action, this is something I just had to do.
It also reminds me of French, in which the most standard word for “future” is “avenir), a collapsed form of “à venir”, literally “to come”. Spanish speakers will also be able to recognize something similar in “porvenir” but the meaning is more distant, and it’s not the standard word for “future.”
5 In Masri, the superlative (e.g ‘best’) is constructed by simply placing the comparative (e.g ‘better’) without a comparison marker (‘than’). People may be familiar with very similar constructions in French and Spanish where to call someone the most beautiful, construction is “La plus belle / La más bellisima” literally “The more beautiful”
The Standard Translation
Below is the standard translation and the transliteration from Masri. I am far too rusty with my Arabic script to make sure that I don’t mess it up when porting it over here. But I know you guys prefer it like this anyway.
Here are the sources for the English translation and the transliteration. Thank you to Mostafa from Friday, June 3, 2011 and Dr. Tahseen Alkoudsi respectively!
1. Always with me; even when you are away from me, your love is in my heart. 2. Always with me; always on my mind and in my heart; I never forget you. 3. Always missing you, even when you are with me. 4. I always long for you, my love; my eyes always call for you; even if the whole world surrounds me, I still need you, my love. 5. Always with me; you have my heart and my life; my dearest love. 6. No matter how far away you are, you are close to my heart. 7. O' My life, my future and my present; my most beautiful destiny. 8. I always long for you, my love; my eyes always call for you; even if the whole world surrounds me, I still need you, my love.
The Original Masri
1. Tamalli maa’aak walaou hatta baa’eid a’aani fi aalbi hawaak 2. Tamalli maa’aak tamalli if- baali iw-if aalbi wala bansaak 3. Tamalli wahishni laou hatta bakoun way-yaak 4. Tamalli habeebi mihtajlak; Tamalli a’aiynayya tistahlak, Walaou hawalayya killi ilkoun bardhouh yahabeebi mihtajlak 5. Tamalli maa’aak, maa’aak aalbi, maa’aak rouhi, ya aghla habeeb, ya aghla habeeb 6. Iw mahma itkoun baa’eid a’anni, li-aalbi areib 7. Ya omri elgaay wilhaadher, ya ahla naseeb 8. Tamalli habeebi mihtajlak; Tamalli a’aiynayya tistahlak, Walaou hawalayya killi ilkoun bardhouh yahabeebi mihtajlak
Note to Literary Agents
I end all of the content I make about my hyper-literal verse form with a call to any literary agents watching/reading.
I have a manuscript nearing completion in which alternating passages are written in a similar experimental verse form, combining English vocabulary with Tamil syntax and morphology. I myself grew up speaking Tamil and English at home.
Its first chapter has already been published in The Black Warrior Review’s 2026 Summer Edition (and they didn’t even know about its linguistic origins until after they accepted the submission; I suppose they just felt it naturally poetic).
In my view, Tamil makes for much better reading in this kind of morpheme-by-morpheme translation, because of its agglutinative nature. Performing it in person in the underground poetry scene in New York always edifies my belief that most English-language speakers are able to follow along effectively, with effort but without great issue.
Below is a brief synopsis of the novel.
America Is The World tells the story of Narasimha, a young man as he first comes of age in rural Tamil Nadu. There, his frustrations grow with the prejudices and suffocating social norms, particularly around love and relationships, of his homeland. There he dreams idly of one day living in America, a land he has only seen on television and in movies, a land he dreams is free of prejudice and hatred—a land where he believes love blooms free.
When his life in Tamil Nadu begins to fall apart, he accepts a coyote smuggler’s offer to bring him to the United States, where he is promised work as a meat packer. He accepts the offer, but he soon discovers that his new home is far from what he imagined. Made to work 12-hour shifts for months on end with only a few hours of sleep each night, the physical toll as well as the emotional disassociation required to slaughter animals on an industrial scale soon begin to pull apart his consciousness, as he begins to self-medicate with hard drugs.
Through his journey, he comes to find the beauty and the horror in the American dream. Although it tells a painful story of immigration and disillusion, the work never lets go hidden its love for this land and its people.
The novel is far from auto-biographical, but it mirrors my own story with America. I have come to love America more than most Americans can understand, as someone who’s had to fight for every squared inch of his place within it.
Ending Note
I have learned humility in my life, so I’ll place this here and never repeat the thought again unless asked, but if people choose to take this verse form to places I haven’t yet dreamed of and wish to give me naming rights, I’d ask that the specific name for this kind of verse to be called “Senthil-Kumarian Hyper-Literal Verse/Translation.”
Tamil last names are patronymic, so that’s actually my father’s first name, but coming to America, I’ve accepted that it’ll forever be understood as a surname. If at times it gets attributed to my father, so be it. He is an unceasingly kind man. What little I have to offer the world, I have inherited its seed from him. I’d be happy to name it in his honor.