Stanza
If they snatch my ink and pen,
I should not complain,
For I have dipped my fingers
In the blood of my heart.
I should not complain
Even if they seal my tongue,
For every ring of my chain
Is a tongue ready to speak.
Let Me Think
You ask me about that country whose details now escape me,
I don't remember its geography, nothing of its history.
And should I visit it in memory,
It would be as I would a past lover,
After years, for a night, no longer restless with passion,
With no fear of regret.
I have reached that age when one visits the heart merely as a courtesy
Highway
A despondent highway is stretched,
its eyes set on the far horizon
On the cold dirt of its bosom,
its grayish beauty spread
As if some saddened woman
in her lonely abode, lost in thought.
In contemplation of union with her Beloved
every pore sore, limbs limp with exhaustion
Do Not Ask My Love
Do not ask, my love, for the love we had before:
You existed, I told myself, so all existence shone,
Grief for me was you; the world?s grief was far.
Spring was ever renewed in your face:
Beyond your eyes, what could the world hold?
Had I won you, Fate?s head would hang, defeated.
Yet all this was not so, I merely wished it so.
The world knows sorrows other than those of love,
Pleasures beyond those of romance:
The dread dark spell of countless centuries
Woven with silk and satin and gold braocade,
Bodies sold everywhere, in streets and markets,
Besmeared with dirt, bathed in blood,
Crawling from infested ovens,
My gaze returns to these: what can I do?
Your beauty still haunts me: what can I do?
The world is burdened by sorrows beyond love,
By pleasures beyond romance,
Do not demand that love which can be no more.
Solitude
Is someone there, oh weeping heart? No, no one there.
Perhaps a traveler, but he will be on his way.
The night is spent, the dust of stars begins to scatter.
In the assembly halls dream-filled lamps begin to waver.
Small streets sleep waiting by the thoroughfare.
Strange earth beclouds footprints of yesterday.
Snuff out the candles, put away wine-cup and flask.
Then lock your eyelids in this morning dusk.
For now there's no one, no one who will come here.
It Is Spring Again
It is spring, And the ledger is opened again.
From the abyss where they were frozen,
those days suddenly return, those days
that passed away from your lips, that died
with all our kisses, unaccounted.
The roses return: they are your fragrance;
they are the blood of your lovers.
Sorrow returns. I go through my pain
and the agony of friends still lost in the memory
of moon-silver arms, the caresses of vanished women.
I go through page after page. There are no answers,
and spring has come once again asking
the same questions, reopening account after account.
Wasteland Of Solitude
In the wasteland of solitude, my love, quiver
shadows of your voice, illusions of your lips.
In the wasteland of solitude, from the dusts of parting
Sprout jasmines and roses of your presence
From somewhere close by, rises the warmth of your breath
and in its own aroma smolders, slowly, bit by bit.
Far-off, across the horizon, dropp by glistening drop
Falls the dew of your beguiling glance.
With such overwhelming love, O my love,
your memory has placed its hand on my heart?s cheek,
that it looks as if (though it?s still the dawn of the adieu)
the sun of parting has set; the night of union has come.
Be Near Me
Be near me now,
My tormenter, my love, be near me—
At this hour when night comes down,
When, having drunk from the gash of sunset, darkness comes
With the balm of musk in its hands, its diamond lancets,
When it comes with cries of lamentation,
with laughter with songs;
Its blue-gray anklets of pain clinking with every step.
At this hour when hearts, deep in their hiding places,
Have begun to hope once more, when they start their vigil
For hands still enfolded in sleeves;
When wine being poured makes the sound
of inconsolable children
who, though you try with all your heart,
cannot be soothed.
When whatever you want to do cannot be done,
When nothing is of any use;
—At this hour when night comes down,
When night comes, dragging its long face,
dressed in mourning,
Be with me,
My tormenter, my love, be near me.
My Heart, My Traveler
My heart, my fellow traveler
It has been decreed again
That you and I be exiled,
go calling out in every street,
turn to every town.
To search for a clue
of a messenger from our Beloved.
To ask every stranger
the way back to our home.
In this town of unfamiliar folk
we drudge the day into the night
Talk to this stranger at times,
to that one at others.
How can I convey to you, my friend
how horrible is a night of lonliness *
It would suffice to me
if there were just some count
I would gladly welcome death
if it were to come but once.
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