God's Masterpiece

I see you, and the face of the earth turns green, and the villages laugh on either side of me;
I hear the singing of the stars, the trilling of all creation, and the dancing of the summits,
and a gladness like life itself floods over me, and a wakefulness rises in me like sweet sleep —
and the sweetest thing in existence: the fates, after you, turning back upon their steps...

I see in your beauty time's excuse, if the unseen may be excused;
as though you were, upon this earth, a rare marvel from a cosmos whose most poetic star is Earth.
He fashioned you as the model of what He can do, and in His secret heart praised what He had fashioned:
eyes in which the sky condenses all its atmospheres into a single vista,
their lids — they kissed serenity, then leaned, unknowing, toward where they were bidden;
upon your lips the wishes of the rose shone forth, and the dawn beckoned, as though asking leave;
in the sanctity of crimson hope — blessed be He who set the jewels in their rows;
and a gathering of silk, threads of pure gold, for which the brow made a gracious pulpit:
they gleam and fade, as though suns from their throne were toying with the ages.
And your heart, with its Babylonian magic, colors your cheeks, or sets them blushing —
as though the fingers of a hidden jinn embroidered its intents whenever it thought!...

Mine is a windfall from life's bounty; I would keep it company a whole lifetime, could it be bought.
I love you — yet I do not know: do the ties between us belong to love?
You walk through the universe, O sweetness of the universe, escorted by a hand unseen;
and the truest of our dreams is that we come out, by fate, upon a tryst between us...
I hid you for fear of what you know — how then did those who learned our secret learn it?
And were there in confession some measure of faithfulness, I would consent — by your eyes — to proclaim it.

Tomorrow we shall meet, and the maidens will ring us round, asking what has passed,
and reap from the pages harvests of our love that never were set down in lines.
I teach you poetry — you who are all my poetry — so who, I wonder, is teaching whom?...

Rushdi Ma'alouf
1945