My Love Road

(Translated by: Abdulwaḥid Lu’lu’a)


My road to you passes by invisible valleys,
Absented by desires’ fog, and fragrance of yearning.
Upon the remote pinnacles, niggardly curtains drop,
Scraping away their areas’ secrets, from the site of years.
*******

My road to you, and what a strange, exciting road!
Villages draped by doubts, and dubious stretch of spaces,
Where doubts haunt, and a wondrous riddle reign.
On their heights my questions shout, but no answer is heard.
*******

Many a vague town is there, and many arduous hamlets,
Where contradictions sleeps, and in the valleys lies,
Where joy so sadly sighs, where song inspires
A long stillness and many forgotten memories .
********

Many a desert there are, where thirst lives in their sand,
I have relegated by my tears, and for it, I,
Have gathered dew, drop by drop, and on its arid land I poured
My blood; as my like on its like me die.
*****

My love road is but vague uplands, and land of shade,
And wastes ever desiring, asking for the unattainable,
Where there are rivers of questions and impossibilities,
Where nights anchor for months, the moon forgets to run.
*******

Between the two impossibilities: my arrival, then my return,
Pass winds, my tears made wet.
I stay awake, and labour, deep in grief and awe,
perhaps I can open a road for my love among my ribs.


(1960) (Collected Works, II, pp. 455-457)