In the Shadow of a Vanishing Muse: the Twilight of Inspiration in Mohamed Zaghlal Mohamed’s poem 🇪🇬🇲🇦

In the Shadow of a Vanishing Muse: the Twilight of Inspiration in Mohamed Zaghlal Mohamed’s poem

بروفسير منال الصاوي 🇪🇬

By Dr-Amany El-Sawy 🇪🇬

Mohamed Zaghlal Mohamed’s Alone, I Mourn My Poem – 2 is not merely a poem—it is an elegy dressed in velvet shadows, a confessional aria sung by a poet who stands at the brink of silence. Love is not whispered but wailed; not gentle, but volcanic. The beloved is not just a woman—she is myth, shrine, eclipse, and exile.

From the first line, readers are plunged into a sacred ache. The speaker does not claim love; he is consumed by it. Memory is a traitor, erasing the “lamps of roses” from her cheeks, and in their place, silence blooms. This is no ordinary romance; it is an offering at the altar of a goddess who remains forever aloof. The cry of “لبيك” (At your service) rings not as obedience, but as a soul surrendering its last resistance. He loves not with possession, but with worship. Love is a ritual drenched in loss.

Midway through the verse, the poet removes his mask, and beneath it, not a sage, but a clown. “You see me as a poet,” he says, “but I am just a jester, rummaging in my hat for a passage to you.” This stunning metaphor unravels the illusion of artistic mastery. The poem is not a triumph—it is a tomb. The poet is not an oracle—but a desperate magician, pulling nothing but echoes from his sleeves. And still, he dances, mournfully, for a glimpse, a gesture, a god. Moreover, the poem pulses with sensuality, but this is not flesh for flesh’s sake;

it is metaphysical hunger. The beloved’s desire, “packed in a cup,” is part fruit, part fire: half pomegranate saliva, half the nectar of her lips. The body becomes scripture, the kiss a covenant. And yet, within this sweetness, rot is seeded. The speaker foresees decay—the “decayed face” of the beloved, the “trembling” of a drunken Adam searching for her in the chaos of lust. Love, in its rawest bloom, is already withering.

The poem is steeped in allegory: the “People of the Cave,” the fallen Adam, the divine chant. These are not mere adornments—they are scaffolding for the soul’s ruin and resurrection. The poet lingers in a timeless limbo, waiting not for a lover, but for a cosmic awakening. Like henna seeking color in the palm, he searches for meaning in the traces she left behind. The woman becomes both Eden and exile; her absence, a prophecy.

To sum up, Zaghlal’s language is fevered silk—rich, somber, and unrepentantly lyrical. Every metaphor bleeds; every stanza flickers like candlelight against a broken mirror. The poem narrows, suffocates, spills over, leaving only “the cloak of a woman” to wrap around its final sigh. The voice is not loud—it is low, tremulous, but thunderous in its undercurrent of despair.

( Alone, I Mourn My Poem) is the sound of a poet burying not just his poem, but himself within it. It is a lament for a muse that won’t return, a shrine that no longer answers prayers. In this poem, love is not the beginning—it is the elegy, the tombstone, and the flame still licking at its edges. And in mourning his poem, the poet has perhaps written his truest one.By weaving together sacred devotion, mythic despair, and romantic vulnerability, Zaghlal creates a powerful text that resonates on emotional, aesthetic, and philosophical levels. It is a love poem, yes—but also a dirge for meaning in a world where memory is fragile, and desire is both salvation and ruin.