Your Face is Like the Beginning of a Poem
Nizar Qabbani beautifully expresses in his poem, “Your Face is Like the Beginning of a Poem”:
Your face is like the beginning of a poem,
It draws me in,
It pulls me,
As if I were a sail,
Set adrift at night towards the shores of rhythm.
It opens vistas of agate,
And moments of pure creativity.
Your face is a breathtaking canvas,
A watercolor masterpiece,
A journey of the most splendid kind,
Between the myrtle and mint.
Your face,
This open notebook, how beautiful it is,
When I behold it in the early morning,
Bringing me coffee with its smile,
And the blush of an apple.
Your face beckons me
To the last poetry I know,
To the final words,
And to the last Damascene rose I adore.
And the final doves.
Your face, my lady,
Is a sea of symbols and fresh questions.
Will I return safe,
While the wind stirs me,
And the waves provoke me,
And passion urges me,
And my journey stretches far?
Your face, my lady,
Is a delightful message
That is yet to reach the heavens.
I Love You Very Much
I love you very much,
And I know the path to the impossible is long.
I recognize that you are the best of women,
And there is no alternative for me.
I know that the era of the beloved has ended,
And the beautiful words have perished.
What can we say about the essence of woman?
I love you very much.
I love you very much and I understand that I live in exile,
And you in exile too, with a storm
Of wind and lightning, clouds, thunder, and fire
Between us.
I know that reaching you is akin to self-destruction,
Yet I find joy
In tearing myself apart for you, precious one.
If they were to give me a choice, I would choose your love again,
O you who wove your garment from leaves of trees,
O you who I safeguarded with patience from the raindrops.
I love you very much and I know I travel in the sea of your eyes without certainty,
Leaving my mind and opinion behind as I run towards my madness.
O woman who holds my heart in your hands,
I implore you by God, do not leave me.
Do not abandon me,
For what would I be if you were not here?
I love you,
I love you very much, and I refuse to escape from the fire of your love.
Can a lovelorn soul truly escape?
I do not care whether I leave love alive,
Or if I exit it, a casualty.
I Love You, I Love You, and This Is My Signature
Do you doubt that you are the most beautiful woman in the world,
And the most important one?
Do you doubt that when I found you,
I possessed the keys to the universe?
Do you doubt that when I touched your hands,
The very fabric of the world changed?
Do you doubt that your entrance into my heart
Was the greatest day in history
And the most beautiful news in existence?
Do you have any doubt about who you are,
O one who occupies parts of time with her gaze?
O woman who shatters barriers with her presence?
I do not know what happens to me,
It is as if you were my first love,
As if before you, I had never loved.
As if I had never experienced love, nor kissed,
Your birth is my rebirth; before you, I cannot recall existence.
You are my shelter, and before your tenderness, I cannot remember living.
As if, O queen,
I emerged from your womb like a fledgling bird.
Do you doubt that you are part of my very essence,
And that from your eyes, I stole the flame
And sparked my most dangerous revolutions?
O flower, jewel, and sweet basil,
The sovereign and the true beauty among all queens,
O fish that swims in the waters of my life,
O moon that rises each evening through the window of words.
O greatest victory among all my triumphs,
O last homeland where I am born,
And buried,
And share my writings.
O woman of wonder, my beloved,
I do not know how the waves cast me at your feet,
I do not know how I walked to you,
Or how you walked to me,
O you who gather all sea birds,
So that they may dwell in your embrace.
How fortunate was I when I found you,
O woman who enters the very essence of poetry,
You are warm like the sands of the sea,
Magnificent like the Night of Decree.
From the day you knocked at my door, my life began anew,
How beautiful my poetry has become
When it flourished between your hands.
How wealthy and powerful I became
When God granted me you.
Do you doubt that you are a spark from my eyes,
And that your hands are a luminous extension of mine?
Do you have any doubt?
That your words flow from my lips,
Do you have any uncertainty
That I am in you and you are in me?
O fire that consumes my being,
O fruit that fills my branches,
O body that cuts like a sword
And strikes like a volcano.
O breast that smells sweet as tobacco fields
And rushes towards me like a stallion.
Tell me,
How will I save myself from the waves of this flood?
Tell me,
What should I do, for I am addicted to you?
Tell me the solution as my longing
Has reached the edge of delirium.
O one with the Greek nose,
And the Spanish hair,
O woman who will not repeat through the ages,
O woman who dances barefoot at the entrance of my veins.
Where did you come from, and how did you come?
How did you stir my soul?
O one of God’s abundant gifts to me,
And a cloud of love and tenderness,
O precious pearl in my hands,
Ah, how much my Lord has given me!
Whistleblowing
Are you the one, my beloved, who conveyed
To the bluebirds news of our affair,
As they tap their red beaks against our window,
And drown our bed with their chirping?
And who told the bees about our home,
So they came to share our dwelling,
Decorating our walls with light?
And who narrated our story to the butterflies?
The fragrance will betray us, my beloved,
For the scent has learned our meeting time.
And who told the butterflies our tale
That silently tracks our traces?
It will expose us, my beloved, this fragrance,
For the sweet aroma knows our rendezvous.