Month: May 2017

Wandering Thought # 47

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Whatever men insisted women should be or are feminism insisted that women should be its opposite, or that the power relation should be inverted so as women gain the upper hand — this reactive stance as much as it is lauded and needed (we’ve been waiting for it for millennia) will not take us beyond the dynamics of the power relation, the dreadful either/or so entrenched in the breast of culture and the shaping of men and women. This reaction should, instead, grasp itself differently, channel its energy differently — rather than being a reaction it should affirm itself, it should be an affirmation and an affirmative act — women are women irrespective of men and the will and desires of men; woman is woman not as an act that is directed against men, but as an affirmative act of herself and her own being, her own life, aspirations, and embodiment in the world — a creative act and a first act. That is essential, since only this will suspend the opposition struggle of men and women and allow each to find itself entrenched in the other — the woman in man, and the man in woman, and their struggle together in the creation of a new culture that goes beyond the limitations of the old. This will truly be the blow that dismantles the gender dynamics that have governed culture since millennia, giving men and women the space needed to discover themselves and each other anew and in a new light. The relation no longer power-centered, its destructive edge will be replaced by a more supportive and mutually understanding spirit that refuses to slide back into the old modes of relating even when conflicts and tensions arise. What will it look like, this culture? What will its men and women be? — it and they are flourishing right under our eyes, they are coming and will come at a quicker pace in the coming decades. The love-flower that daring spirits dreamed a thousand years ago — we are the witnesses of its coming of age.

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Haiku # 483

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…الوقت يمضي

عقرب الساعة
لدغة ذنبه
ثقب في قلبي

~

Les fleurs fanées
retournant comme larmes…
première pluie d’automne

~

 Au fil des années
les larmes pourraient-elle
devenir des fleurs ?

~

Is this life ? –
longing for a freedom
we will never have

~

Landing at my desk
the birdsongs from the field
poking fun at me

Free Verse # 404 (tes yeux mon encrier)

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Tes yeux
mon encrier,
ta peau
la vague où
voulant écrire
je me noie,
je me perds.

~

…et le jour tisse le souffle des moments transpercés par la lecture des livres de philosophie, poésie, et le cœur de l’amour.

~

Mystical companionship,
together reading and writing
philosophy and poetry,
tangled in the roots,
two trees growing symbiotic
from the white breast of love.

~

Amour inachevé, amour inachevable, dans tes entrailles le don du poème, de la danse, de la vie.

~

Wanting me to write her poetry
she came,
night overflowing
from her glass of wine,
in the light of the moon
her freckled skin dressed.

~

Tout ce que je possède,
quelque gouttes de sang dilués
dans l’eau du poème,
dans le noir de ses cheveux
un oiseau rouge arrondissant
le nid de mes rêves.

Silent Dithyramb

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In the still night
my heart surrounding her
is stiller still,
a dithyramb composed
of an infinite yearning,
a longing deeper
than the womb of the sun.

My heart surrounds her
with the tranquil charm
of the silent sea at dawn,
as my touch in wave after wave
falls upon her skin,
languidly burning,
my breath wrapping her
like a dreaming cloud.

Now she sleeps,
and as her eyes close
her other eyes open,
wide awake
inside the infinite landscape
of poetry’s own heart.

I write for an imagined reader

Pierre Mhanna1 Comment

I write for an imagined reader,
An immanent being
Inside the words, within the writing.

I write propelled by a longing
For someone who cannot exist,
Living and martyred by this longing,
Irrational to persist and nurture
What cannot be brought to fruition,
Caressing an illusion,
A shadow swiftly passing
Into the fading light of dusk,
There and not there,
Appearing in its very act of disappearance.

And yet, for all of its agony,
The poem cannot hold her tongue
Nor dry away its fervent blood,
So I write, a whirling mass of solitude
In a sky inhabited by the whiteness of silence,
And the suffering heart goes on
Suffering, alone, untouched,
Fired by who? Fueled by what?
Eaten by its own desire to give and touch
And the ghost breathing inside the words
Promising the enigma of a human touch.

Je t’écris

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Je t’écris
comme un moine dans son cloitre
parle avec Dieu,
comme les arbres dénudés
touchés par le printemps
fleurissent durant la nuit.

Je t’écris
le soupir des jasmins
sous le caresse de la lune,
le feu doux de l’aube
dans les gorges des oiseaux.

Je t’écris
comme un poète remplis
par l’âme du poème,
comme une flamme de chandelle
dont le souffle éteint
les larmes de la nuit.

Je t’écris
parce que l’amour ose
être tout ce qu’il peut
dans un monde sans rêve,
parce que l’amour vit
dans l’éternité de Dieu.