Poem: Words
He whispers to me as he dances with me
Words that are unlike any other words
He lifts me gently beneath his arm
Planting me among the clouds
As the dark rain in my eyes
Falls in droplets, cascading
He carries me with him, carries me
To a rose-tinted evening on the balconies
And I am like a child in his hands
Like a feather carried by the breezes
He brings me seven moons
In his hands along with a bundle of songs
Gifted to me is the sun, he bestows upon me
Summer and flocks of swallows
He tells me that I am his masterpiece
And that I equal thousands of stars
That I am a treasure, and indeed
The most beautiful of all the paintings he’s seen
He narrates tales that leave me in a daze
Making me forget the dance and the steps
Words that reshape my history
Transforming me into a woman in moments
He builds me a castle of illusions
In which I inhabit only fleeting moments
And I return, I return to my table
With nothing but words by my side.
Poem: A Little Love Letter
My beloved, I have so much to say
Oh, where to begin, my precious one?
Everything about you is royal, oh you
Who turn my phrases into silk threads
These are my songs, and this is I,
Intensified by this little book
Tomorrow, when you flip through its pages
And a lamp yearning sings from a bed
Letters bathe in longing
And punctuations are about to take flight
So don’t you say: what is this boy
Who speaks of rivers and streams
Of almond trees, of tulips I mention
As I walk through this world, when I wander
And if he utters what he does, not a star
Remains untouched by my fragrance
Tomorrow people will see me in his poetry
A wine that is deep and sweet, with verses short
Let the tales of people not make you
Great, except for my immense love
What would the earth be if we were not here?
If your eyes did not exist, what would it become?
Poem: Five Letters to My Mother
Good morning, oh sweet one
Good morning, oh my beautiful saint
Two years have passed, oh mother
Since the boy sailed into the sea
On his legendary journey, hiding in his bags
The morning of his green homeland
Its stars, its rivers, and all its red siblings
He buried in his clothes a few sprigs of mint and za’atar
And a bouquet of Damascene lavender
While the smoke of my cigarettes is tedious
And my chair is restless
And my sorrows are little birds
Still searching for a shore
I have known women of Europe
I’ve felt the emotions of concrete and wood
I have known the civilization of weariness
I have roamed India, traversed Sindh, and explored the yellow world
But I have not found a woman who would comb my golden hair
And carry with her sugar dolls
And soothe me when I falter
Oh mother, oh mother, I’m the boy who has sailed
And the sugar bride in his thoughts
Oh, how did you become a father without growing up?
Good morning from Madrid, what news of the jasmine?
I entrust to you, oh mother
That little girl, a child of love
Who was my father’s dearest beloved,
He doted on her as if she were a child
Inviting her to a cup of coffee,
Feeding her with love and showering her with tenderness
And my father has passed, yet she still lives in the dream of his return
Searching for him in the corners of his room
Inquiring about his cloak and his newspaper
Asking when summer arrives about the turquoise of his eyes
To scatter over his palms
Gold coins of light
Greetings, greetings to the home that taught us love and mercy
To your white flowers, joy of the star-shaped square
To my bed, to my books, to the children of our neighborhood
And to the walls filled with the chaos of our writings
To lazy cats that sleep in the mornings
And climbing wisteria on my neighbor’s window
Two years have passed, oh mother
And the visage of Damascus
Is a bird scratching in our hearts
Pecking on our curtains gently with our fingertips
Two years have passed, oh mother
And the night of Damascus, the fold of Damascus
Dwells in our thoughts
The minarets illuminate the boats
As if the minarets of the Umayyad Mosque are planted within us
As if the orchards of apples
Unfold in our consciousness
As if the light and stones
Have all come with us
September has arrived, oh mother
And sadness has come bearing gifts for me
It leaves at my window
Its tears and its complaints.
September has arrived, where is Damascus?
Where are my father and his eyes?
Where is the silk of his gaze?
Where is the scent of his coffee?
May God grant him peace.
Where is the expanse of our grand home?
And where are our blessings?
Where are the paths of the sweet basil?
Laughing in its corners
And where is my childhood in it?
I drag the tail of his cat and eat
From his vine and pick
From his violets.
Damascus, oh Damascus, oh poetry
On the pupils of our eyes that we have written
And oh beautiful child,
From its tresses we have woven.
We knelt at its knees and melted in its love
To the point that in our love we have killed.
Poem: I Must Take Leave of My Homeland
O my friend, in these days
I see a summer butterfly emerging from our pockets called homeland
Slipping from our lips is a Syrian grapevine named homeland
Emanating from our shirts, minarets, nightingales, streams, carnation, quince
A little waterbird named homeland.
I want to see you, my lady,
But I am afraid of hurting the sentiment of my homeland
I wish to call to you, my lady,
But I fear the windows of my homeland may hear me
I long to express love in my own way
Yet I shy away from my own foolishness
Before the sorrows of my homeland.
Poem: The Damascene Poem
Here is Damascus, and here is the glass and the wine
I love, and some love can stab.
I am Damascene, if you dissect my body
There would flow from it clusters of apples
And if you opened my veins with your knife
You would hear echoes of the departed in my blood.
The farming of the heart heals some who have loved
And what does my heart have, when I love, but surgeons?
Is the house of Fatima still well?
For the breast is stirred and the kohl is applied.
Here, the wine is a fragrantly burning fire,
And do the eyes of the women of Sham hold goblets?
The minarets of Syria weep when they embrace me
And the minarets too have souls like trees.
For jasmine fields are found in our homes
And the house cat sleeps wherever it finds comfort.
The coffee grinder is part of our childhood,
How can I forget? When the cardamom fragrance wafts?
This is the place of “Abu Al-Mu’taz” waiting
And “Faiza’s” sweet and charming face.
Here are my roots, here is my heart, here is my language
How can I clarify? Is there clarity in love?
How many Damascenes have sold their bracelets
To flirt with her, and the poetry is the key?
I have come to you, oh willow tree, to apologize
So will Haifa and Waddah forgive me?
Fifty years, and my parts are scattered
Above the ocean, while there’s no lamp in sight.
Endless seas tossed me without shores
And demons and phantoms chased me.
I fight ugliness in my poetry and literature
Until flowers bloom and the traiwax rises.
What does Arabism seem like as if it were a widow?
Is there not joy in the history books?
And what will remain of poetry’s integrity?
If it is taken over by impostors and flatterers?
And how do we write with locks in our mouths?
And every moment comes with a butcher?
I carried my poetry on my back and it’s tiring me
What remains of poetry when it is resting?
Poem: On a Notebook
I will gather all my history
On a notebook
I will feed every punctuation
The milk of golden words.
I will write, it does not matter for whom
I will pen these lines
For all I care is to confess here
The face of disclosure is enough for me.
Letters that are indifferent
I scatter them on a notebook
With no hope of permanence
With no hope to be published
Perhaps the wind will carry them
To plant in their travels here a thicket of thyme
Here a vineyard, here a granary
Here a sun and a lovely green summer
Letters I will dissolve like the heart of the red peach
For every captive who lives
With me in my greater prison
Letters that I will implant
With the flesh of our lives, a dagger
To break in its rebellion a seal
Once thought unbreakable
To unlock a coffin prepared for us
To be laid to rest in.
These writings I present
As a message to feel
It would please me if it stayed
Tomorrow, an unknown source.
Poem: Trying to Save the Last Female Before the Arrival of the Tatars
I count the empty cups of our coffee
And gnaw on the last piece of verse I have
And bang my skull against the wall
I count you, piece by piece
Before your departure from me, before the train’s departure.
I count your delicate fingers,
I count the rings in them
I count the streets of your chest, house by house
I count the rabbits hiding under the blanket
I count your ribs, before and after the embrace
I count the seams of your skin before and after my entry
And after my explosion and after my explosion.
I count your toes to ensure that silks are in good condition
And that milk is fine and that the Giovanni (Mozart) is fine
And that the Damascene doves are still playing in my yard.
I count your body details
In inches and inches, in yards and seas,
In waist and curve, face and back.
I count the sparrows
Stealing wheat and flowers from between your breasts,
I count the poem, line by line
Before the explosion of languages and before my explosion.
I try to hang on to the nipple before the sky falls on me
And before the curtain falls.
I try to save the last lovely breast
And the last female before the arrival of the Tatars.
I measure the space of your waist before the shell falls on the glass of my letters
And before my splitting, I measure the space of my love, yet fail.
How can a small sail
Like a heart cross the vast seas?
I measure the immeasurable
Oh woman of prophetic realms, do you accept my apology?
I count your perfume bottles on the shelves,
And a wave of dizziness hits me,
I count your marvelous dresses
And enter a forest of bronze and fire
The strands of your hair resemble the dimensions of my freedom
And the colors of your eyes open up worlds.
Oh woman, I am still counting your hands
And mistakenly distinguishing between the rise of hands and the dawn
How I wish to meet you for five minutes
Between my collapsing and collapsing,
This war devours my flesh and yours
What can I say? And what words suit this devastation?
I fear for you, but I do not fear for myself
For you are my last madness
And you are my last combustion
You are my grave and you are my shrine:
I count you from the first earring to the last bracelet
From the source of the river to the Gulf of the Shell
I count the cups of our desire then start to count them anew.
Perhaps I forgot the counting a little
Perhaps I forgot the counting a lot
But I have not forgotten peace
On the peach tree in your lips
And the scent of roses, and the pomegranates : I love you
Oh, woman who remains with me in this time of siege
I love you!
Oh woman who still offers me a rose in the time of dust.
I love you until incarnation, until unity,
Until my demise within you, and until my total dissolution.
I love you, I need to express a bit of poetry
Before my suicide decision.
I love you, I must rescue the last female
Before the arrival of the Tatars.