(Some twenty years in friendship with poetry’s (Adam) who reshaped
(Adam) the human inside of me)
On the plains extending in my language, there is still grows with me the bunch of my talent
There is no limit to the poems so as to conclude them
My fancy perishes but my imagination doesn’t
Cheers to poetry … I twist the neck of its bottle and pour out my simile and pun
As if, when shivering with wine, I get stuck between electrified wires
The bird of prophecy will makes me feel in the dream as a winged creature
Alone I splinter my loneliness into humans, thus
A whole universe of hearts folds up inside my heart
I prayed for creation, all creation, and my hermitage extended beyond the longitudes
The whisper of the breeze, the murmur of the river, a sparrow’s trilling of joy- these are my hymns and prayers
In my heart the globe has lost all its lines, so in my heart the globe is united
For all the barefooted travelling along the road of life, I will walk shoeless
For love of this soil, a love that objects to my being guided by unmuddied stars
Love testifies that in its documents I register the earth as a member of my family
Some twenty years, for them I’ve designed assonance as a dress is made to fit the curves of a fashion model
I’ve presented the symbol with a tarboosh to shade itself,
And haven’t denied a hat to meaning
If myself ever distances itself from me the length of a rhyme, I draw near to it the length of a narcissus
Art prevents me from retiring to a stone unless I leave it inhabited by a pearl
I never claim to receive heavenly inspiration because I’ve never claimed affinity to any sky except my skull
How misfortunate a twig is when an ace weans it, and then it grows in the embraces of my penholder.
Some twenty arrows, I used to shoot them at truth from the bows of my questions.
Doubt is a lonely individual with no supporters,
Wrenching my right side and left side
I wish that certitude whose nails grew long would scratch
That part of my wicked thoughts which I could not reach
If I cry: ah! the horizon shatters revealing transcendental pits and caskets and tombs.
Outside of me there are a thousand wars waged by humans, and inside me a thousand ones among gods
If the arrow could ever boomerang again, I would destroy my bow and never repeat my battle
The justice of wind in distributing its wealth
Entices me to wish the wind to be my graveyard
I only need from the invisible a road I used to travel from the will of God to my midwife’s palm
I had crossed the river under guard and it stopped me on the two banks at a cradle and a tombstone
What a miserable crossing! I bled the forty years for it and I still pay up the fare
There is no rope whereby to tie the hopes of salvation if identity becomes the well of my abyss
Some twenty years! I’ve been walking in their tracks the way storms walk, since my chaos is my map
I’ve never glittered and my color was that of a spike!
I’ve never come upon the right way and my height was the same as that of a minaret
I’m covered in the temperament of wind where my blood never salutes unbolting horses
Here is the topography of my soul, if an ibex ever climbed it he would return dragging his feet
People only know me as a throat; I wish they knew that lies behind my throat
I’m beauty that’s being denied by its own eyes; has denial, afterwards, more space?
A field but was abandoned by its woods, hence it became devoid of the sheen of wheat and corn
I dwelled in my name which became a country for me,
And never left it exiled to my character
Never trace me to the well which took part in the injustice done to Yousif (Joseph)
Never make a fool of my father!
Never rummage in my saddlebag for your aims, as there aren’t any silver cups among my belongings
Yes, my red headscarf is my brain which I never take off because my head and scarf are so inseparably united
Brothers of my heart, I still beseech you not to mix up salt with sugar in love
I’ve forgiven, so instigate not a reason that would seek me out on the feet of forgiveness
Yousif hadn’t been lovelier in his handsomeness than the handsomeness in pardon and forgiveness.
