I Write to You

I write to you
the way a bird
feels the wind
gliding under his wings,
the way the fire crackles
with passionate heat
to consume ever wildly,
the way a root
with infinite patience
descends into the dark;
I write to you
the way the rain
kisses the earth
after a long summer,
the way a monk
prays to God
in the solitude of his cell;
I write to you the way
wine ferments in darkness
and wheat grows gold
in the summer sun,
the way dawn fills the heart
with the still clarity of its light.
I write to you because I love you
and you have turned my life
into a journey of love.

Advertisement

Things Invisible

There are things invisible
whose presence is known only
by the way they affect others
such as the wind passing through
or kindness for no reason given
or the way your beauty
makes light glow around your skin
or the way my love bends the world
in a hymn song for you

Walking To You

Walking to you
I lose count of the distance
as miles laps
into endless miles,
I lose count of the time
as days swiftly turn
to months, to years,
everything becomes
background and echo
and only you remain,
you, love, the focal point
around which all time and space
spin and converge,
you, the expansion in my heart,
giving my life
freedom and meaning,
filling each moment
with peace and ecstasy,
teaching me to live this poetry…

Pierre Mhanna

When I think of you…

When I think back of your suffering,
of the images and moments
that never leave me,
when I remember the questions
that in your pain you asked,
why me? What wrong have I done?
When I see your eyes again,
and the look in them
as you saw your life
which you loved so much
crumble before you and slip away
although you wanted it to stay
with all your heart.
When I feel how year after year
you grasped at us and at life
with every bit of strength and hope
you had in your loving heart,
and your words of not wanting to die
and leave us still ringing in my ears
as your tears rolled down
as I held you and tried to comfort you,
telling you it won’t happen,
that we’ll find a way.
When I think of your strength
and faith and patience
and how you dealt with it all
blow after blow,
and how after each storm of pain and tears
you were laughing again
and trying to manage and elevate yourself
and embrace life with whatever you had.
When I think of that time I told you
that it should’ve been me, not you,
and you told me not say that
because you were stronger than me.
When I think of your unborn daughters,
the ones we told you you’ll have,
and that time on your deathbed
when you asked me if one day
I’ll name my daughter after you, Sarah.
When I think of time of our childhood
when we played in the fields
by the cemetery where you’re now buried,
and all the times we frequented
the river and mountain
surrounding that place,
never thinking for a moment
that me or you can one day lay there,
at least not before old age.
When I think of my life without you,
how, still, I am not finding a way to move on,
how I’ll never see you again,
not once, not ever,
how you will be missing from all
the events of my life…

When I think of you after all these years
you tell me that life must go on
and the poem must be finished,
you tell me to finish all the paintings
you wanted to create,
you tell me to be this love.

I smile and I kiss you.
I love you with all my heart.

Wandering Thought # 129

With many it happens as with a dead star, all the lost loves and the unnoticed griefs crowd within their hearts until the weight becomes unbearable. Looking in the mirror, they wonder how it came to this, and no longer recognize themselves. To go on, they have to lock themselves away, turn away from who they are. Time passes, life moves on, from this abyss they no longer know how to pull themselves out from. The real struggle is not to lose what’s best in us.

Free Verse # 458 (watching her sleep)

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.

Another Way of Being

As though life
is a fog,
a fading dream,
vanishing as we reach
to touch it,
images shivering in the water,
flowing away, already gone
when barely seen.

We live in the afterglow
of things that were,
eclipsed before being
fully embodied,
things filled with decay
even as they flourished,
things that are always leaving
only to lead us on and on
to a nowhere that exists
only in our hearts.

The heaviest love
is weightless and impotent.
The strongest attachments
are thin as the wind.

In this vast, endless
openness,
I pray, teach me
surrender,
let me become love. The only journey is the one within,
all else is illusory.

Wandering Thought # 120

When was the last time you felt your body as Eros incarnate, as though the fires of creation itself were leaping out of it and could not be contained? When did you last feel your existence entire as a divine fragment, filled with longing for something infinite, overflowing with an incomprehensible madness and an exquisite harmony? When was it you last felt all the stars in the universe pulsing in your single beat of heart, pulsing and pulsing with an irremediable fire that wants to create over and over the entire universe in the image of your love? A thousand lightning churning together through your body, yet deeply imbued with the stillness of dawn?—Ah listen, just wait and listen, the whole of life is within you, it was for you that the universe was created, it was to embrace you that love was born. It is time to open you heart and feel, and let go of the constraints of your mind. Feel, even if it tears you apart; feel this boundless joy that has been your fate since the beginning of time.

Love Desired

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.

Wandering Thought # 116

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.

Free Verse # 456 (this solitude)

Poetry,
my one faithful love,
the only one who keeps
watch over me
and waits
and waits
to touch my face
and fill my heart.

~

Not just the earth,
touched by autumn’s rain
even this longing
exudes poetry

~

The moon’s light dissolves
all memories
of past and future,
and ties everything
in a silent knot
that whispers: “now.”
Nothing exists
outside this moment,
nothing lives
outside your heart.

~

Je t’aime, il lui a dit,
chaque jour au lever du matin,
chaque jour au coucher du soleil.

أحبكِ، قالها لها،
كل يوم عند طلوع الضوء،
كل يوم عند مغيب الشمس.

~

In the end, logic is the death of man; it’s where the poetry in his soul goes to die.

~

For a poet, it is enough, in this world, to have a little corner in which to sit with a book, a desk and some paper, to read and write to the light of a candle, lit by the impassioned flame of longing.

~

There are many who preach hate in the name of love.

كثيرون هم من يبشرون بالحقد باسم الحب.

~

I value a heart by how much longing it is capable of holding.

~

My life – I measure it in moments of poetry.

~

This solitude – without it I would not recognize my face.

Haiku # 700

Without a name
I go alone…
winds of autumn

Sans nom
je vais tout seul
sous le vent d’automne

~

Autumn evening…
the smell of a flower blooming
on the edge of my days

~

Autumn evening…
this loneliness deepens
with the colors of the sky

~

Her smile…
something to take with me
on the long journey

ابتسامتها
شيء لآخذه معي
في رحلتي الطويلة

~

Réunissant nos âmes
l’amour fusionne nos corps
en un seul poème

Beyond Words – this union with You

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.

Free Verse # 454 (a trail of leaves)

أعاني من الأرق لأن نار وجهك تسكن أحلامي.

~

It is her fragrance
that sets the garden
into motion,
she walks in
and everything is alive
with light and love.

~

Unrecognized, our desires come to haunt us in the night.

~

Night does not exist in the city except as an anomaly.

~

This poetry
a trail of leaves
that I follow
deep into the forests
of my childhood,
into the deserts
and high mountains
of my longing,
reminding me of who I am
and who I want to be.

~

Wrapped up in his arms
she unwinds her day,
her breath and thoughts slowing down,
his embrace filling her
with safety and warmth,
as the world outside fades
and a single star shines
from the quietness of their belonging.

~

الحب هو وليد اللحظة، أما الصداقة فتبنى.

Love is the child of the moment, but friendship is built through time.

Wandering Thought # 113

I write because the words open my heart to something greater than I am. I write because, being open, I am transformed through the grace of the other. I write as a form of communion, with the world, with the sacred, with love. I write as a poet; I write as a lover.

Love is a form of communion, that would not be possible without this stepping outside of our social roles, this intimate knowing and being known, this raw offering to the other, bare to the bones, this being seen in one’s soul, which fills us with harmony and light, giving us a deep sense of belonging, and giving us back to the world — as what? — as a divine fragment, as something transformed.

Free Verse # 453 (a small poem)

Without them knowing
all the poets and painters
borrow from your beauty
to write and paint

~

Night falls
In the darkness
I feel myself being lowered
into a place of light

~

I begin every day with a small poem, and that is the little sun I plant inside my heart to accompany me throughout the day, that is my little prayer, my conversation with God.

I began by seeing her with my eyes, then I saw her with my heart.

It is the kindness that I love most in a face.

My woman has a body made of poems; I unravel her by delving into the waters of her mystery.

~

أكتب
كأنني امرر أصابعي ببطئ
فوق تعاريج بشرتك،
كأنني أتنشق رائحة شعرك
في صباحٍ خريفي.

~

When I am alone and silent
I find your face floating
to the surface of my heart
like a gentle wave of light

~

Though I’ve only known it
through the grace of poetry
your touch has pronounced
a holy utterance in me
turning my heart into a chapel
and a place of worship
filled with the fire of your love

These Poems

These poems, I write them
so I would not forget
how you taste like,
how you smell,
how simply seeing you
fills my heart with light.

These poems are doors
I keep going through,
doors opening to rooms
filled with endless skies,
rooms where you have just left
as I walked in
leaving only your scent
and a letter or two.

These poems remind me
of the stain of your lipstick
on the wine glass from that night
that we laughed and shared our silence
and looked into each other’s eyes
and knew.

These poems are my heartbeats
caught in a capsule
and carried by the waves
always towards you,
but you are the sea
and you are the waves
and the shore beyond is you.

These poems always say
one and the same thing,
“there is no place left in me
for being and non-being,
I am all-being, in you.”

These poems always say the same thing
though each time
a little stronger and more deeply,
these poems say, “I love you.”

These Poems

These poems I write
are birds I send away
over mountains and fields,
through white clouds
and over distant seas,
so that, one dawn of day,
they might return
and tap at my window,
fill my heart with their song
having seen your beautiful face.

Haiku # 693

بنيتُ لكِ في قلبي
كنيسةً صغيرة
ملأى باسمِكِ

~

In my heart
I built a small chapel
filled with your name

~

Her deep eyes
a perfect day
to fall in love

~

ما أحبَّ الرجلُ امرأةً إلا ولمسَ الشعرُ قلبهُ.

~

أنظرُ في عينيها
ثمَ أقبلها  واحدةً واحدة
أزهارُ بشَرتِها

Landscape

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.