One of the most prominent literary figures in the Arab world, the Syrian poet Nizar Qabbani died in London. Mr Qabbani, who was 75, became popular in the fifties after he published a volume of love poetry. He was known throughout the Arab world for his love poems which often focussed on the feelings of Arab women living in male-dominated societies.

His love poems have been turned into immensely popular songs performed by some of the most famous singers of the region. Mr Qabbani started out in the Syrian diplomatic service before taking up poetry as a career and moving to Beirut in the 1960s.

Often referred to as the poet of love and women, his highly-sensual poems pushed the boundaries of what was considered appropriate in Arabic literature.

Nizar Qubbani profile from the Arabic Poems website.

A Poem by Nizar Qubbani
Title (English): Bread, Hashish and Moonlight
Title (Arabic): Khubzun wa Hashishun wa Qamar

When the moon is born in the east,
And the white rooftops drift asleep 
Under the heaped-up light, 
People leave their shops and march forth in groups
To meet the moon   
Carrying bread, and a radio, to the mountaintops,
And their narcotics.    
There they buy and sell fantasies 
And images,  
And die - as the moon comes to life. 
What does that luminous disc 
Do to my homeland?  
The land of the prophets, 
The land of the simple,
The chewers of tobacco, the dealers in drug?  
What does the moon do to us, 
That we squander our valor 
And live only to beg from Heaven?
What has the heaven  
For the lazy and the weak? 
When the moon comes to life they are changed to 
corpses,
And shake the tombs of the saints,   
Hoping to be granted some rice, some children... 
They spread out their fine and elegant rugs,  
And console themselves with an opium we call fate 
And destiny. 
In my land, the land of the simple  
What weakness and decay     
Lay hold of us, when the light streams forth!
Rugs, thousands of baskets,
Glasses of tea and children swarn over the hills. 
In my land,  
where the simple weep,  
And live in the light they cannot perceive;  
In my land,   
Where people live without eyes, 
And pray,   
And fornicate,   
And live in resignation,  
As they always have,  
Calling on the crescent moon: 
"O Crescent Moon!    
O suspended God of Marble!  
O unbelievable object!   
Always you have been for the east, for us,  
A cluster of diamonds,   
For the millions whose senses are numbed" 

On those eastern nights when 
The moon waxes full,       
The east divests itself of all honor 
And vigor.    
The millions who go barefoot,  
Who belive in four wives    
And the day of judgment;  
The millions who encounter bread  
Only in their dreams;  
Who spend the night in houses 
Built of coughs; 
Who have never set eyes on medicine;  
Fall down like corpses beneath the light. 

In my land,  
where the stupid weep 
And die weeping  
Whenever the crescent moon appears  
And their tears increase;  
Whenever some wretched lute moves them...
or the song to "night" 
In my land,   
In the land of the simple,   
where we slowly chew on our unending songs- 
A form of consumption destroying the east- 
Our east chewing on its history,   
its lethargic dreams, 
Its empty legends,  
Our east that sees the sum of all heroism 
In Picaresque Abu Zayd al Hilali