Like fresh morning dew
my kisses sink into her neck,
from her chin down
to the hollow above her chest,
going around to her collarbones,
then to her nape at the back
as I lift her dark hair,
falling slowly to the expanse
between her shoulder blades…
…my kisses circle her neck
like a Sufi turns
ecstatic and feverish,
lost in prayer
as with each turn
he falls deeper
lost in God.
أجلُسُ وحيداً معكِ ولو كانَ بيننا ألفُ شخضٍ وشخص.
~
You pull me up when the whole world is pulling me down, and that is enough.
~
Rien ne réchauffe sans amour.
~
نحنُ دائماً مُغَلَفين بِأنفُسِنا.
~
قليل من الشعر ليروي عطش الليل.
~
Everyday
life flows a little more
into my veins
at the thought of touching you…
this life becomes fire
and has the name of poetry
~
In my dreams I wander
solitary as the moon,
only her eyes call me on and on
to hidden horizons,
to poetry, to wine,
to madness,
to a love so great
it tears open
the whole sky.
~
Though I come
with a laden heart,
one moment with you
empties me
of all my burdens.
~
Light touching her skin
A halo of poetry
~
When I touch you
even in thought
I am relieved
from that dreadful weight
pressing on my chest
~
Stripped bare
by this music;
a leaf
left trembling
in the passing wind.
~
Between his hands
her body swayed…
a violin aching
to weep
the sweetest music
~
The kiss he plucked from her mouth
a ripe fruit, red and bitter sweet,
filled with so much longing that
a tremor traveled between them
shaking the old fault lines and roots
and shaping them anew,
forged along the outlines
of their merging bodies.
كل ضجيج العالم يتلاشى عندما أسمع صوتك.
~
هي قصيدةٌ مكتوبةٌ بلغة
أرغبُ أن أُمضي حياتي
وأنا أُترجمها
~
في هذا العالم المجنون
يبقى حُبُنا ملاذُنا الآمِن،
فيهِ نكون نوعاً آخَرَ من الجنون،
فيهِ نكون أنا أنا وأنتِ أنتِ.
~
أكتبُ
كأنّ قصيدتي تتلمَّس
دفءَ بَشَرَتِها
~
قُبلتَها
كلما مرّ لساني على شفتي،
أحسستُ بطعمها،
نبيذٌ أحمر، نارٌ، شعر،
كأن روحي قد ثملت
وهي تشرب من روحها.
This warmth between us
the knitted verse of poetry
~
Life happens while you wait
for a lover to ease the knot of fate
~
What am I? — Just a shadow passing in the rain.
~
If someone asked me
what proof have I got
that I really lived,
I’d only have my poetry.
~
Wounded by this longing,
I write poetry.
~
Water washes the skin but rain cleanses the soul.
~
Barefoot
she walks in my dreams
spilling moonlight
from her dark hair,
her breath
a candle whispering
the softest intimacy.
~
Watching her sleep,
to the candle’s light
he weaves his breath
and covers her gently.
Cruising into old age,
reading books
and writing poetry.
~
With one foot in the grave
she sits smiling at me…
my mother
~
هذا المطر
في عتمةِ الليل عاشِقَين
يُقَبِلان بَعضَهُما
~
This rain…
in the dark night two lovers
passionately kissing
~
كقمرٍ في الماء
ترتَجِف
وأنا أُقَبِلُها
The passing years
knitted our lives
closer and closer
until we became
woven together
into a single fabric,
our beings emitting
a deeply harmonious music
as they merged over and over
with ever increasing intensity,
enlarging our love,
this world between us,
this infinitely warm nest,
to fill the whole sky,
mirroring each other
ever so truthfully,
ever so nakedly,
in the still water of our silence,
our shared and beating heart.
Loving each other meant transforming into the best versions of ourselves we could ever be; it meant finding, through each other, the secret source of joy in our own hearts; it meant opening up and flowing, but also being contained and cradled; it meant traveling away and going, but always connected by a hidden thread, and always under a watchful and caring eye. Love is being in becoming, always from the central place in our own hearts.
When I think of you
I come near
to something unsayable;
when I try to say it
I sink in the afterglow
of a deep prayer;
quietness opens
a door in my heart
and there you are,
a mystic sunk
in intimate conversation,
a flame kept alive
by the grace of love.
As I hold my pen
her skin under my fingers
stretches into a landscape,
each word I write
spins a little vortex,
a turning Sufi, a small flower,
all spreading across her skin,
spreading like a fire,
dripping into her soul
and coursing deep down,
filling her with more love
than she can understand,
with unbearable gentleness
opening her wide,
opening her to God,
opening her to the sky.
One by one I kiss
the flowers of her skin,
then look into her eyes.
She didn’t feel
the frost on her skin
until it melted
under the warmth
of his fingertips
~
مشّطتُ شعرها على مهل
وقبّلت الندى على كتفيها
ثم جلست بينما استلقت هيَ
وأمسكتُ القلم وسال الشعر
حبرا على بشرتها
~
Things break,
people die,
friends and lovers
go into the night
and return no more.
من كل شيء
تعرّت
وارتدت ما حاكه لها
من نفسه
وضوء القمر
Relished slowly
with yearning lips
the wine I poured
into the hollows
of her collarbones
~
Today the wind
comes to tell me
of her deep longing,
the woman whose breath
I feel in my bones.
Between his hands
her yearning body
became an altar
offering its wine
to the tremor of his lips
~
Night over the woods –
alone
in their cabin,
her face buried
in the pit of his neck.
My eyes
opening them slowly
to my lover’s kiss –
No! It was just the roll
of distant thunder!
~
Her kiss
thunders in my head;
as it fades
it leaves my heart
drenched in warm rain.
Night falls,
her dark hair in rivulets
fills its lonesome corners;
the candle of her breath
ignites somewhere
inside the vast darkness,
casting a play of shadows
against the spinning walls;
a cloistered world,
an intimate world
of poetry and wine
and our lips
and our naked bodies
tangled and merging
somewhere deep inside.
All flowers bloom
propelled by a dream:
that one day
they will be plucked
to adorn
the curls of her hair.
~
In her heart
she was looking
for a piercing gaze
that would open her
to eternity,
that would deliver her
to the altar of God.
~
In the heart
of my darkness
I found a light,
when I listened
it uttered
the syllables of your name.
~
She lives in me as the sea –
still at its heart,
endless in its expanse
ebbing and flowing,
rushing and foaming
for all eternity.
~
From within this abyss
of space and time
I sing to her,
and this song
is my healing grace.
~
From behind I
gaze
at her bare shoulders
and slender neck,
this delicate flower
with a head stooped
full of heady nectars,
and my fingers ache to dance
and my lips ache to taste,
reveling in a woman
whose light fills my heart
with the joy of poetry.
~
Her eyes
a window to a mystery
I long to unravel
day after day
night after night
~
With every poem
I am learning to touch you
in a different way,
in a new way,
but always
like a wave aching
to unfold in your heart.
Poetry—
the choreography of my verses
caressing your skin
in their longing to experience
the sanctity of your heart.
~
By the shore she stood
waiting for him,
listening to his voice
coming through the mists
and wetting her cheeks,
her fingers yearning
to caress his beard
and raise to her lips
the salt of its white years.
Long after you were gone I still went to bed with your ghost every night, making love to nothing more than a memory, to my need for you, to all the ways in which I dreamed you and constructed you in my mind. I fashioned you out of light and poetry, out of pure passion, an unreal being that I now had to let go, to let you fly and vanish amid the turning stars. Now I let you go and deepen in this longing turning like a universe at the center of my heart.
Her wild heart…
All the ways in which it runs
untamed and free
~
Hot summer night…
sipping red wine
and thinking of her lips
~
Shared whispers
two souls weaving
their intimate tapestry
The rain at dawn
sharpens your absence,
I wake up with my body
aching for your touch.
~
My ideal woman,
she’d wear summer for a dress,
with its jasmine flowers
she’d braid her hair;
her skin would smell
of its sun kissed apricot,
from her lips would flow
the velvet of its wine.
~
I looked into her eyes
searching for love,
but her heart was closed
and love was gone,
and I was out alone again
walking the endless waste
of this world we call modernity.
~
After all this time
I find that in my heart
I still love her,
achingly as if
in the shadow of absence
her love only grew,
tremendously as if
my lips against hers
were always pressed
though I only breathed her in
through the mouth of silence.
~
You feel her beauty swell in your heart not because of your attractiveness or looks, but because of what you feel when you look into her eyes.
~
This life of suffering out of loving her and not being able to have her is infinitely preferable to a life in which I did not know her at all.
~
Au moment où mon regard s’est plongé dans ses yeux je suis devenu un homme qui vit sur les mers.
The moment I gazed into the deeps of her eyes I became a man living his life sailing the high seas.
~
A man in love doesn’t measure the beauty of his woman by the shape of her body but by the depth he feels when he looks into her eyes.
~
La poésie existe afin que l’homme sache comment caresser la femme et sentir la blancheur de l’amour palpiter dans son âme.
Poetry exists so that a man may know how to caress a woman and feel the white wings of love flapping in her soul.
~
جمالها وهج
يكتنفه الغموض؛
الضوء في عينيها
بحر لا ينتهي.
Her beauty is a glow
shrouded in mystery;
the light in her eyes
is an endless sea.
~
A seafarer
sailing the sea of her eyes;
I sail in endless waters
never reaching a port,
never seeing a shore.
A seafarer
I sail the sea of her eyes,
and that sea is my home.
مسافر انا
في بحر عينيها،
بحر لا مرفأ فيه
ولا شاطىء؛
مسافر انا
في بحر عينها،
وبين امواج روحها
أجد سكناي ومنزلي.
Rooted in Love 