The Poem of Sadness

Your love has taught me, my lady

How to become sad..

And I have been needing for ages..

For a woman to make me sad

For a woman…

In whose arms I could cry

Like a bird….

For a woman..

Who will pick up my pieces

As (if they were) scattered shrapnel

Of a broken cristal..

Your love has taught me, my lady

The worst of habits

It taught me to open my (coffee) cup ..

In one night, a thousand times

And to try healers’ medicine

And to knock on clairvoyants’ doors

It taught me to leave my house

To wander on the sidewalks of roads

So that I could chase your face..

In the rain and in cars’ lights
And to chase your spectrum...
Even.. even in the news papers...

Your love has taught me...
How to daydream..for hours
Searching for a gypsy hair
Envied by all of the gypsies
Searching for a face..for a voice
That is all of the faces and all of the voices..

And to gather from your eyes ..

Millions of stars

Oh you woman...

Who has stunned the whole world

Oh how painful it is…

This everlasting pain

Your love made me visit, my lady,

The cities of sorrows

And before you… I have never entered

The cities of sorrows

I never knew that tears are the human*

That a human without tears

Is only a memory (ghost) of a human

Your love has taught me

To behave like children…

To draw your face with chalk on the walls
And on the veils of fishermen
On bells...
On crosses...

Oh you woman who has altered my history

I am slaughtered in (love with)  you

From one artery to the other

Your love has taught

How love can change the map of eras

It taught me..

That when I love..

The earth stops from turning

It taught me…

Things that never came to mind

So I read children’s stories

I entered Djinn’s Kings’ palaces

And I dreamt that ..

The sultan’s daughter would marry me

She, whose eyes, are clearer ..

Than the waters of bays

She, whose lips, are sweeter

Than pomegranate flower

And I dreamt that I kidnapped her

Like chevaliers..

And I dreamt that I gifted her

Necklaces of pearls and coral

Your love has taught me, my lady

What delirium is…

It taught me.. How life passes by..

And the sultan’s daughter ..

Never comes…

Your love has taught me..
How to love you in all things
In the naked trees...
In the dry yellow tree leaves..
In the rainy weather..and.furious winds
In the smallest of cafés..
Where we drink, in the evening, our black coffee..

Your love has taught me..
To seek shelter...
In nameless Hotels..
And in nameless Churches
And in nameless Cafés..

Your love has taught me...
How the night heightens the sadness of strangers...
It taught me.. how to see Beirut..
(As) a woman with a tyrant like temptation..
(As) a woman who wears every.. every evening..
Her most beautiful dresses..
And sprays perfume on her breasts...
For (the sake) of sailers ... and princes..

Your love has taught me..
To cry without crying..
It taught me how sadness sleeps
As a slave with cut off feet..
On the roads of Raouché and Alhambra..

Your love has taught me, my lady

How to become sad..

And I have been needing for ages..

For a woman to make me sad

For a woman…

In whose arms I could cry

Like a bird….

For a woman..

Who will pick up my pieces

As (if they were) scattered shrapnel

Of a broken cristal..

*Meaning that what makes the human who he is , are tears