Wandering Thought # 362

What the world corrupted, love will heal.

This consumer, work-centred world will do its best to discredit your belief in the primal force of love, discard your passion, and deafen your senses to this wondrous song that begins anew each day in your heart.

The first illusion always is the belief in the reality presented to you by your time and age. Most men spend their lives trapped within it, discarding as insane the few loners and solitary figures who dare step outside.

Even evil people need to tell themselves stories that make them look good in their own eyes.

I believe in the redeeming power of love and poetry.

Haiku # 753

Le miracle d’amour…
avec mon cœur j’écris
ma vie en poèmes

The miracle of love…
with my heart I write
my life into poems

Spring morning…
waking up to the sound
of the pouring rain

The days are slow
yet swiftly it passes…
this life of leaves and wind

The words will find you…
a bird at dawn
singing after the rain

Past midnight…
the owl’s hoot
lulls me back to sleep

Tanka # 226

This burning world
that I keep loving,
a bird who sings
because he found
dawn in his heart.

Wandering Thought # 357

Love grants us an inner sight of the person we love, our beloved. Therefore, we see them in a light no one else does, and know them in a way unknown to others. They become unique to us, as between us grows what feels like an inner bond, an unseen thread that binds us. And this inner knowledge lifts us above our mundane selves, enabling to see ourselves through this love, to see ourselves in a divine light. For love melts us, merging us into the whole, of which we are but a fragment. We become aware of our immensity, of our infinitude, yet we remain the same, our individual, finite social self which others see, know, and comprehend. Only the interior dimension is hidden, and the eternal that binds our hearts to an unfathomable openness. We are ourselves, yet so much more. We are vessels of light. Love grants us this vision, this Reality within this reality, and it is the blessing of a lifetime to be able to live it, to embody it, if only for a time before death releases from the cycle, and again into the light.

Wandering Thought # 356

A profane world, deprived of the Sacred, is a world in which beauty and ugliness can no longer persist, for these derive their very nature and existence from the Sublime, which is itself the avenue of the Sacred. In a profane world, only desire persists, pleasure or displeasure, attraction or repulsion, but not Love, no longer that which allows the feeling of the Eternal to swell in our hearts and overwhelm our souls. We do not know quite yet what it is we are killing in ourselves as we detach our world from the Sacred. Our world becomes base, petty, profane, anti-spiritual, but for this lack, we can fill our souls with an endless multitude of pleasure. Yet the pleasure in its multitude will not fill the abysmal gap which opened up inside us, and which will devour us whole.

Haiku # 744

He is a poor witness
he who sees beauty
only with his eyes

Who am I?
Just a wanderer taking
the long way home…

With the eyes of a poet
I will spend my life
looking at the world

L’éternité est là, elle a le goût de tes lèvres.

You don’t know what love is until it breaks your heart.

ضوءُ القمر، غذاءٌ للروح.

Haiku# 742

Who I am
I barely seem to know
except in moments
when love fills my heart

When I touch you
my heart begins to sing
like a bird feeling
the first rays of dawn

With nothing to hold on to
life drifts on
a leaf carried
by the autumn wind

In the ashes of my poems
I find myself again,
feel the fire that kept me
alive through the years.

Haiku# 739

In my nebulous heart
I keep you hidden…
a whirling sea of stars

In an old man’s eyes
a fractured life
of fading memories

The old man’s hands
shaking as his eyes
gleam with memories

“Why don’t you just stay?”
the words he waited
his whole life to hear

Last Days of Summer

Last days of summer,
the damp autumn mists
cover the mountains;
we light a fire and sit,
an owl hoots
deep in the valley;
the potatoes roast,
wine smears our lips,
we are warm, together,
as the clouds billow lower
enveloping us, weaving
our story into the one
bursting all around.

Tanka# 220

Love is the ocean
poetry the froth
falling off its edge
smearing for a moment
its endless shores

With my poem
I touched you
more intimately
than my hand
ever could

Haiku # 734

في أعماقها
ما زالت تتذكر جريان النهر
عندما أحبّها

وحيداً أجول العالم
لبيتي سطحٌ
من ريحٍ ونجوم

A wanderer I am…
my home is only
a roof of stars and wind

قلبيَ الوحيد
عصفورٌ إسودّ ريشُهُ
معِ الزمن

This prayer…
burning whispers
between our lips

Wherever he goes
he carries
her fragrance in his heart

Free Verse # 462 (السلام الداخلي، inner peace)

‏لملمس يدي في بشرتها
وقعُ الموسيقى عند الفجر
هادئةً ورقيقة تنسكبُ
كالندى في جسدها
لتتفتّح في داخلها حقول زهرٍ
تتموج مع أنفاسها
وتملؤها عطراً أتنشقهُ
وأنا أقبّلها

When I touch you
a sound that accompanied
the universe
since its inception
finds its echo in me

This love in my heart,
this longing that I write,
it fuels my life and paints it
in a motley of colors
all streaming from a source
indescribably white.

السلام الداخلي، أعظم عطية يمكن أن يعطيها شخصٌ لآخر.

Inner peace is the greatest gift a person can bestow on another.

جذرٌ واحد

‏أحببتُها في سكونِ روحي.

كان بينهما شيئاً كالليل، غير منظور وأبديّ.

هذا الشعر، إرتدادُ الضوء عن بشرتها.

أنصتُّ إلى صمتِها، كأنَّ في روحيَ شيءٌ من عمقِ روحها.

للجمالِ إسمٌ، هو وجهُها.

أمامَ جمالِ روحها، الصمتُ أبلغ من الشعر، للصمتِ وقعُ رنينِ الصلاة.

‏هي فيَّ وإنا فيها، لروحَينا جذرٌ واحد أعمَق من الحياة.

الحبّ، هذا الشيء الصغير الذي يُعطي لحياتنا معناها الأكبر.

Haiku # 732

Spring morning…
a crow jumping
happily in the grass

صباحٌ ربيعي
حتى الغراب يقفذ
سعيداً في الأعشاب

One day I will touch you
and it will all make sense
in my heart

‏يوماً ما سألمسك
وعندها ستجد الحياة
معنىً في قلبي

The Sacred Longing

At the core of each of us
there is a sacred longing,
an ever burning flame
that quivers with divine light,
it is the restless source
ever pulling at our heart,
turning our pain and sorrow
into its own exquisite wine,
it is the voice of God
in a quiet moment,
it is the rose opening us
to the eternity of the sky.

There is a sacred longing at the core of each of us, it’s how God taps into our hearts, uniting us all through the grace of Love.

The Nest

A small bird
pecks the ground
looking for small twigs
to make its nest.

I, sitting close by,
reading my book,
wonder if I’m not doing the same,
searching amid the words
for little twigs
to make my own nest,
the nest that will warm
my soul and heart.

Yet I know,
no matter how far and deep
I search, no matter
the twigs I find
and the worded nests I build,
no nest will truly hold my soul
and keep my heart warm
as the palms of your hands
cupping my aging face,
as your love holding me
through this long life.

Haiku # 729

‏كأنّ في قلبي شمعةٌ
كلّما أغمضتُ عيناي
رأيتُ في نورِها وجهَكِ

To my heart’s candle
every time I close my eyes
I see your face

Fermant mes yeux
je vois ton visage
à la lumière de mon cœur

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.

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