I Love You Until the Sky Rises
In order to regain my spirit,
and the vitality of my words,
and to escape from the pollution belt
that wraps around my heart,
for the earth without you
is a massive lie
and a rotten apple.
I wish to immerse myself in the faith of jasmine
and defend the heritage of poetry,
the blueness of the sea,
and the greenery of the forests.
I want to love you
until I feel assured
that you are still okay,
that you are still okay,
and that the fish of poetry swimming in my blood
are still okay.
I wish to love you
until I break free from my aridity,
and my salinity,
and the stiffness of my fingers,
and my colorful dreams,
and my ability to weep.
I want to love you
until I bring back the details of our Damascene home,
room by room,
tile by tile,
dove by dove,
and converse with fifty tulip cups
as a jeweler does.
I wish to love you, my lady,
in a time
where love has become disabled,
and language is impaired,
and books of poetry are feeble.
For neither can the trees stand upright,
nor can the birds spread their wings,
nor can the stars move forth.
I want to love you
from the gazelles of freedom,
and the last message
from messages of lovers,
and I want to hang the last poem
written in the Arabic language.
I want to love you
before a fascist decree is issued,
and I want to share a cup of coffee with you,
and I want to sit with you for two minutes
before the secret police pull our chairs away,
and I want to embrace you
before they arrest my mouth and my arms,
and I want to weep in your hands
before they impose a customs duty
on my tears.
I wish to love you, my lady,
and change the calendars,
and rename the months and days,
and set the world’s clocks
to the rhythm of your steps,
and the scent of your perfume
as it wafts into the café
before your arrival.
Indeed, I love you, my lady,
in defense of the horse’s right
to neigh as it pleases,
and the woman’s right to choose her knight
as she wishes,
and the tree’s right to change its leaves,
and the people’s right to change their rulers
whenever they wish.
I want to love you
until I return to Beirut its severed head,
and to its sea its blue coat,
and to its poets their burnt notebooks.
I wish to restore
to Tchaikovsky his white swan,
to Paul Éluard the keys to Paris,
to Van Gogh the sunflower,
to Aragon the eyes of Elsa,
and to Qais ibn al-Mulawwah
the combs of Layla al-Amriyya.
I desire you to be my beloved
until poetry triumphs
over the silencer,
and students prevail,
and the rose triumphs,
and libraries triumph over weapon factories.
I want to love you
until I reclaim the things that resemble me,
and the trees that used to follow me,
and the Syrian cats that used to scratch me,
and the writings that used to define me.
I want to open every drawer
that my mother kept hidden,
containing her wedding ring
and her rosary from Hijaz
that she has preserved
since the day I was born.
Everything, my lady,
has fallen into a coma,
for satellites
have triumphed over the poets’ moon,
and electronic calculators
have surpassed the Song of Songs,
and Pablo Neruda.
I wish to love you, my lady,
before my heart becomes
a spare part sold in pharmacies,
for heart doctors in Cleveland
manufacture hearts in bulk
just like shoes.
The sky, my lady, has become low,
and the high clouds
are now loitering on the asphalt,
and Plato’s Republic
and Hammurabi’s Laws
and the prophets’ commandments
have sunk below sea level.
And the Sufi elders advise me
to love you
until the sky rises a bit.
I Love You Very Much
I love you very much
and I know that the road to the impossible is long,
and I know you are the woman of all women,
and I have no alternative.
I know that the time of nostalgia has ended
and beautiful words have died.
Who can we say is the woman of all people?
I love you very much.
I love you so much and I know I live in exile,
and you live in exile,
with a wind between us,
and clouds,
and thunder,
and lightning,
and snow and fire.
I know that reaching your eyes is an illusion,
and I know that getting to you
is suicidal.
It pleases me
to tear myself apart for you, my precious one,
and if they were to choose for me,
I would repeat my love for you a second time.
O you who wove your shirt from leaflets,
O you who I protected with patience from raindrops,
I love you very much.
I know that I travel in the sea of your eyes
without certainty,
and I leave my mind behind and run,
run
after my madness.
O woman who holds the heart in her hands,
I ask you by God, do not leave me,
do not leave me,
for what would I be if you were not here?
I love you very much,
and very very
and I refuse to retire from the fire of your love,
and can a lover suffering from passion retire?
And I do not care
if I exit love alive,
and I do not care
if I exit dead.
Love Without Borders
O my lady,
you were the most important woman in my history
before the year departed.
You are now the most important woman
after the birth of this year.
You are a woman that I cannot quantify by hours and days.
You are a woman made of the fruit of poetry
and the gold of dreams.
You are a woman who inhabited my body
millions of years ago.
O my lady,
woven from cotton and cloud,
O rains of ruby,
O rivers of Nahawand,
O forests of marble,
O you who swim like fish in the waters of my heart,
and dwell in my eyes like a flock of doves.
Nothing will change in my feelings,
in my sense,
in my existence and my faith,
for I shall remain steadfast in the faith of Islam.
O my lady,
do not fret over the rhythm of time and the names of years,
you are a woman who remains a woman at all times.
I will love you
after entering the twenty-first century,
and upon entering the twenty-fifth century,
and upon entering the twenty-ninth century,
and I will love you
when the waters of the sea dry up,
and the forests burn.
O my lady,
you are the essence of all poetry,
and the rose of all freedoms.
It is enough for you that I can spell your name
to become the king of poetry
and the Pharaoh of words.
It is enough that a woman like you loves me
for me to enter the history books
and to raise banners in my name.
O my lady,
do not tremble like a bird in the time of feasts,
nothing about me shall change.
The river of love shall not cease to flow,
the heartbeat shall not stop beating,
the dove of poetry shall not stop flying
when love is immense
and the beloved is a moon.
This love shall not turn
into a bundle of straw that the fire consumes.
O my lady,
there is nothing that fills my eyes,
neither lights,
nor decorations,
nor the bells of the holiday,
nor the tree of Christmas.
The streets mean nothing to me,
neither does the tavern,
nor any words
written on holiday cards.
O my lady,
I remember nothing but your voice
when the bells of the holidays ring.
I remember nothing but your scent
when I sleep on the herbs,
I remember nothing but your face
when snow falls on my clothes
and I hear the crackling of the firewood.
What delights me, O my lady,
is to curl up like a frightened bird
among the meadows of eyelashes.
What amazes me, O my lady,
is that you gift me a pen from the ink pens,
and I embrace it
and sleep happily like children.
O my lady,
how happy I am in my exile,
dripping the water of poetry
and drinking from the wine of the monks.
How empowered I am
when I become a friend
to freedom and humanity.
O my lady,
how I wish I had loved you in the Age of Enlightenment,
and in the Age of Illustration,
and in the Age of Pioneers.
How I wish I could meet you one day
in Florence,
or Córdoba,
or in Kufa,
or in Aleppo,
or in a house among the alleys of Sham.
O my lady,
how I wish we could travel
to a land ruled by the guitar,
where love is without walls,
words are without borders,
and dreams are without barriers.
O my lady,
do not stress about the future, my lady.
My longing shall remain stronger than it was
and fiercer than it was.
You are a woman who does not repeat in the history of roses,
and in the history of poetry,
and in the memory of lilies and basil.
O lady of the world,
nothing occupies my mind but your love in the coming days.
You are my first wife,
my first mother,
my first womb,
my first passion,
my first desire,
my lifebuoy in the time of deluge.
O my lady,
O lady of the first poetry,
extend your right hand so that I may find refuge in it,
extend your left hand
so that I may inhabit it.
Recite any phrase of love
as the holidays commence.
Love, My Beloved
Nizar Qabbani states in his poem “Love, My Beloved”:
Love, my beloved,
is a beautiful poem written on the moon.
Love is drawn on all the leaves of trees.
Love is inscribed on
the feathers of birds and raindrops.
But which woman in my country
if she loves a man
is not met with fifty stones?