The Most Beautiful Expressions of Love by Nizar Qabbani
Among the most exquisite poems by Nizar Qabbani that celebrate love are the following:
Poem: I Love You Very Much
In this poem, the poet Nizar Qabbani expresses his feelings through the following verses:
I love you very much
And I know that the path to the impossible is long
And I know that you are the woman of all women
And I have no alternative
And I realize that the time of longing has ended
And beautiful words have died
Oh, you are the women, what can we say?
I love you very much…
I love you to the point of despair and know that I live in exile
While you are in another exile
And between us
There are winds
Clouds
Lightning
Thunder
Snow and fire
And I know that reaching your eyes is an illusion
And reaching you
Is a form of suicide
And it brings me joy
To tear myself apart for you, my dear
If I were given a choice
I would repeat my love for you a second time
Oh, you who wove your shirt from tree leaves
Oh, you who I sheltered from the raindrops with patience
I love you very much
And I know that I am traveling in the sea of your eyes
Without certainty
And I leave my mind behind and run
I run
I run after my madness
Oh, woman who holds my heart between your hands
I implore you by God, do not leave me
Do not leave me
For what would I be if you are not here
I love you very much
Very, very much
And I refuse to retire from the fire of your love
Can one lost in love ever retire…
And I do not care
If I leave love alive
And I do not care
If I leave it dead
Poem: The Most Intense Love I’ve Experienced
Nizar Qabbani conveys his emotions in the poem “The Most Intense Love I’ve Experienced” through these lines:
The world blames me if I loved
As if I created love and invented it
As if I painted it on the cheeks of roses
As if I am the one who
Taught the birds to fly in the sky
And sowed it in the wheat fields
And dissolved it in the waters of the sea
As if I am the one who
Hangs it like a beautiful moon in the sky
The world blames me whenever
I mention the one I love…
As if I am the passion
And its mother… and its sister
What I anticipated
Is different from all that I knew
Different from all that I read
And all that I heard
If I had known
This was a form of addiction… I would not have indulged in it
If I had known it was a door with many winds, I would not have opened it
If I had known it was a matchstick, I would not have ignited it
This passion… the most intense love I’ve ever lived
I wish that when it approached me, opening
Its arms for me… I had rejected it
I wish I had killed it before it killed me
This love that I see at night
I see it in my dress
And in my perfume… and in my bracelets
I see it engraved on the palm of my hand
I see it etched in my emotions
If they had told me that it is a child, playful and noisy, I would not have let it in
And that it would smash glass in my heart, I would never have accepted it
If they had told me it would set fires in moments
And turn everything upside down in moments
And paint the walls red and blue in moments
I would have expelled it
O precious one who
Made God pleased with me… when I loved you
The most magnificent love I ever lived
I wish that when it came as a visitor
With roses, I had embraced it
And I wish that when it came crying
I had opened my doors for it… and kissed it
And kissed it
And kissed it
I opened my doors for it… and kissed it
And kissed it
And kissed it
As long as you are my green bird
My beloved
Then… surely God is in heaven
My beloved asks me:
What is the difference between me and the sky?
The difference between you both
Is that if you laugh, my beloved
I forget the sky
Love, my beloved
Is a beautiful poem written on the moon
Love is drawn on all the leaves of trees
Love is engraved on
The feathers of birds and the raindrops
But what woman in my country
If she loves a man
Is not stoned with fifty stones
When I fell in love
I changed
The kingdom of God changed
It became twilight that sleeps in my cloak
And the sun rises from the west
Oh Lord, my heart is no longer enough
For the one I love… equals the world
So place in my chest another
That fills the space of the world
You still ask me about my birthday
Then take note of what you are ignorant of
The date of your love for me… is my birthday
If the genie came out of its bottle
And said to me: Here I am
You have one minute
To choose whatever you wish
From pieces of ruby and emerald
I would choose your eyes… without hesitation
Those dark-eyed ones
Those rain-filled eyes
I never ask God for anything
Except for two things
To protect those eyes
And to add two more days to my life
So I can write poetry
About these two pearls
If you were, my friend
At the level of my madness
I would throw away all the jewels on you
And sell what you have of bracelets
And sleep in your eyes
I complain to the heavens
I complain to the heavens
How did you manage, how, to condense
All the women in the universe
Because the words of dictionaries have died
Because the words of letters have died
Because the words of novels have died
I want to discover a way to love
In which I love you… without words
I have not told them about you.. but they
Have seen you bathing in my gaze
I have not spoken to them at all… but they
Read you in my ink and on my pages
Love has a fragrance… and cannot
Not emanate… from peach orchards
I hate to love like everyone else
I hate to write like everyone else
I wish my mouth were a church
And my letters were bells
The pens melted in my romance
From blue… and red… and green
Until words came to an end
I hung my love for you in the doves’ bracelets
And I did not know, oh my beloved
That love flies like a dove
Count on your fingers, what follows
For first: you are my beloved
Second: you are my beloved
Third: you are my beloved
Fourth and fifth
Sixth and seventh
Eighth, ninth
And tenth… you are my beloved
Your love, oh deep-eyed one
Is an extremity
A mysticism
A worship
Your love is like death and birth
Hard to repeat twice
I loved twenty thousand women
Tested twenty thousand women
Yet when I met you, my beloved
I felt that now I have begun
I have booked a room for two in the house of the moon
To spend the weekend there, my beloved
Hotels of the world do not please me
The hotel I wish to stay in is the moon
But there, my beloved
They do not accept a visitor who comes without a woman
So will you come with me
O my moon… to the moon
You will not escape me, for I am destined for you
You cannot rid yourself of me… for God has sent me to you
So sometimes… I emerge from the tips of your ears
And sometimes I appear from the turquoise bracelets on your hands
And when summer arrives, my beloved
I swim like fish in the sea of your eyes
If you remembered every word
I uttered during those two years
If I were to open the thousand letters
I wrote in a full two years
We flew as two doves in the expanses of love
And the ring on your left finger… became two rings
Poem: I Bear Witness That There is No Woman But You
Nizar Qabbani declares in his poem “I Bear Witness That There is No Woman But You” the following verses:
I bear witness that no woman
Has mastered the game but you
And has tolerated my folly
For ten years as you have
And kept my madness at bay as you’ve endured
And trimmed my nails
And organized my notebooks
And placed me in kindergarten
But you…
I bear witness that no woman
Looks like me in her essence
In thought and behavior but you
In sanity and madness but you
And in quick boredom
And quick attachment
But you…
I bear witness that no woman
Has taken from my attention
Half of what you took
And colonized me as you did
And liberated me as you did
I bear witness that no woman
Treated me like a two-month-old child
Except you…
And offered me the milk of a bird
And flowers and toys
Except you…
I bear witness that no woman
Was generous with me like the sea
Exalted like poetry
And spoiled me as you did
And corrupted me as you did
I bear witness that no woman
Has allowed my childhood
To extend to fifty… except you
I bear witness that no woman
Is able to say she is the women… except you
And that in her navel lies
The center of this universe
I bear witness that no woman
Is followed by trees when she walks
Except you…
And that doves drink from her icy body
Except you…
And that lambs graze on the summer grass of her armpit
Except you
I bear witness that no woman
Simplified in two words the story of femininity
And incited my manhood against me
Except you…