The Transformation of Zarqā’ al-Yamāmah in the Poetry of Muḥammad ʿAbd al-Bārī There are a number of modern and contemporary Arabic poems which have used the pre-Islamic figure of Zarqā’ al-Yamāmah as a means to deliver warning, express fears, elegiac sentiments, and critiques of contemporary Arabic societies in specific moments in recent history. Modern and contemporary poets have taken advantage of the structure and trajectory of the ancient story of Zarqā’ al-Yamāmah, the Arab Cassandra, who warns her people of an imminent attack, only to be dismissed by the leading men of her tribe, to their great detriment. The impending attack arrives, the men are killed, women taken as booty, and Zarqa’ herself is crucified after having had her eyes plucked out by the conquering king. Poets have used this ancient myth to craft their own messages, often expressing despair, rage at leaders who do not heed obvious warnings, and to mourn destruction visited on the Arab societies to whom the poets direct their compositions. Muḥammad ʿAbd al-Bārī, the poet of Sudanese origin who has gained a remarkable reputation across the Arab World, and won several international poetry prizes over the last decade, has composed a Zarqa’ al-Yamamah poem which transforms the myth, and changes the trajectory of the poem and his treatment of the myth significantly. Muḥammad ʿAbd al-Bārī is known for his use of sufi and philosophical idiom, images, and metaphors. This recent poem is no exception, in which he constructs thoughts which Zarqā’ al-Yamāmah had not articulated in her clear-sighted and quasi-prophetic utterances to her people so long ago. This paper will examine this poem in detail, analyze its poetics, situate it in the larger body of ʿAbd al-Bārī’s body of work to date, and relate his work to the broader currents of transformation in Modern and Contemporary Arabic Poetry. The paper will also treat the use of the Zarqā’ al-Yamāmah myth, to see how ʿAbd al-Bārī has used the myth and transformed it in order to deliver his modern day message, and compare his work to the other instances of invocation of Zarqā’ al-Yamāmah by other modern and contemporary poets.