Dreams
How vain your illusion still, O dreams —
spread your promises over me,
soothe my arms; I embrace phantoms
no arms have ever wrapped around me.
***
You come with the first dream of my night,
shimmering in the garment of temptation,
and from between my hands the morning
snatches her away, and you are gone,
leaving on my lips the trace of kisses
with the fire of thirst in them —
no softness of cheeks, no perfume of longings,
no lips to quench it.
***
Shake off her phantom and wake, you who have gone adrift,
O harvester of the fragrant fields —
the vineyard is calling you, and the threshing floor,
and the wheat-ears bound in sheaves.
***
And I? Oh, who could put you far from me?
I would go out in your night,
as if you were an angel come to me from heaven
and I a hermit at prayer before you.
O you who are cold in love, you cannot
meet the sun and the fire,
nor has the sweet one's wound, in your nights,
carved out a thousand keepsakes,
that you might call your heart a blaze and embers —
no, no: it has no blaze,
nor is there in your eye the flare of the hearth,
only the glimmer of a moon on snow.
***
Enough, enough — I dreamed of you a lifetime,
and the dream made me forget
the delight of the quarter's girls, fair and dark.
Go your way — the world is full for me.
***
I open my arms to a thousand breasts and one,
gulping down, at life's dusk, its drunkenness,
till my heart goes out like some river
the desert is drinking dry...
Khalil Hawi
The Uses of a Candle

That little candle has other merits besides its light. It is in truth a useful material that makes many things easy for us. Do you know, for instance: that candles last long if they are kept in a cool place?

And that the mark which heat leaves upon tables, dining boards, and small wooden chairs can be removed by coating them with a candle? The place affected by the heat should be rubbed gently with the end of the candle, and afterward polished vigorously with a warm woolen cloth, until every trace of the wax disappears and with it vanishes every mark the heat has left on the polished wood. If the mark is badly scorched, repeat this operation upon it several times, for it is certain to vanish in the end.

A necklace of pearls or beads can be strung with ease if the thread is dipped from time to time in the melted grease of the candle, which stiffens the tip of the thread and makes it easy to pass through the smallest holes of the beads.

And cupboard drawers that are hard to open, or that stick when pulled, become easy to open and to shut if their edges are rubbed with a candle.

And if you were to collect the small pieces of candle, and the leavings found in the candlesticks, in a tin vessel, they could be turned to good use in lighting fires: the fire flares up quite easily if you throw a piece or two of them upon the fuel.

And if you put a few small pieces of candle inside a bag of woolen cloth and rub the base of the iron with it, it will pass over the clothes you are ironing with perfect ease and glide.

And it is necessary that the housewife keep a quantity of candles and a box of matches within reach of her hand, so that if the electric lights in the house should go out for one reason or another, there is no need for the family to remain in the dark, whether for a short while or a long one.

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