I Want I want to write you words that don’t resemble words. I want to make a language for you alone to fit the shape of your body and the breadth of my love. I want to leave this leafed-through dictionary. I want to leave my mouth (I’m sick of circling the round ring of my mouth!) I want another mouth that can change when it chooses to a cherry tree or a matchbox. I want a new mouth, from which new words can come like sea nymphs leaping from the ocean’s foam like white chicks jumping from a sorcerer’s hat. Take all the books I read in childhood. Take all my grade-school notebooks. Take the chalk and the pens and the blackboards. Teach me a new word I can hear, to hang like a ring on my lover’s ear. I want other fingers to write another way. (I hate fingers that are neither too long nor too short, as I hate trees that neither die nor grow.) I want new fingers tall as ship masts long as the necks of giraffes, fingers to stitch a poem-shirt for my love, one she never wore before me. I want to make you an alphabet different from all alphabets, one that has something of the rhythm of rain one that has something of the dust of the moon one that has something of the sadness of clouds the ache of willow leaves crushed beneath the wheels of September. – Nizar Qabbani Translated from Arabic by Paul Weinfield, © 2013
Posted on: Tue, 25 Mar 2014 01:25:46 +0000
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