~ Nizar Qabbani (translated by W.S. Merwin and Lena Jayyusi), “Between us” "Between us twenty years of age between your lips and my lips when they meet and stay the years collapse the glass of a whole life shatters. The day I met you I tore up all my maps an my prophecies like an Arab stallion I smelled the rain of you before it wet me heard the pulse of your voice before you spoke undid your hair with my hands before you had braided it There is nothing I can do nothing you can do what can the wound do with the knife on the way to it? Your eyes are like a night of rain in which ships are sinking and all I wrote is forgotten In mirrors there is no memory. God how is it that we surrender to love giving it the keys to our city carrying candles to it and incense falling down at its feet asking to be forgiven Why do we look for it and endure all that it does to us all that it does to us? Woman in whose voice silver and wine mingle in the rains From the mirrors of your knees the day begins its journey life puts out to sea I knew when I said I love you that I was inventing a new alphabet for a city where no one could read that I was saying my poems in an empty theater and pouring my wine for those who could not taste it. When God gave you to me I felt that He had loaded everything my way and unsaid all His sacred books. Who are you woman entering my life like a dagger mild as the eyes of a rabbit soft as the skin of a plum pure as strings of jasmine innocent as children’s bibs and devouring like words? Your love threw me down in a land of wonder it ambushed me like the scent of a woman stepping into an elevator it surprised me in a coffee bar sitting over a poem I forgot the poem It surprised me reading the lines in my palm I forgot my palm It dropped on me like a blind deaf wildfowl its feathers became tangled with mine its cries were twisted with mine It surprised me as I sat on my suitcase waiting for the train of days I forgot the days I traveled with you to the land of wonder Your image is engraved on the face of my watch It is engraved on each of the hands It is etched on the weeks months years My time is no longer mine it is you"
Posted on: Tue, 01 Oct 2013 08:06:01 +0000
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