the world of longings, a beloved spirit
whom my eyes have never seen... and yet he is
in my thoughts — O distant one so near!
In my illusion I almost see him with me...
flooding my heart with delicate tenderness,
soaring with it toward the heaven of love
on a wing of unfettered light.
My olive tree — God! — how many a stirring thought
my illusions have whispered to me!
And how many fantasies, passing through my mind,
your poet branches know...
Would that I knew: if tomorrow the hand of death
bears me away from you to my grave,
will you forget my sojourn here,
you who bend so tenderly over my heart?
Will you forget a heart whose secrets
your merciful branches treasured up?
God bless them... how often they crooned to its crying longings
and lulled them to rest!
My olive tree, by God, if after me
the wandering breeze comes drifting toward you,
then remember how its brimming, fragrant perfumes
once breathed upon us both.
Remember me whenever the late-afternoon sun
sets your green leaves glistening —
for how many a sunset I saw off
with a burning heart and weary eyes.
Alas — will the nights fold me away tomorrow,
and the dark graves enclose me?
Then where do the throbbings of love go,
and where the tremors of feeling?
And my heart's light, and the visions, and the hopes,
and this fire in my depths?!
Will they all vanish, scattered,
as if they had never set my being aflame?
Is there no returning for this heart —
to passion, to poetry, to the inspiration of imagination?
Will its kindled fire go out?
Ah, the wretchedness of the heart at such an end!
O Lord, when the hour of death has come
and my spirit is set free from my body's frame,
and rushes toward You, full of yearning,
drawn back to its first wellspring —
and when this body lies hostage to the dust,
a castaway in the tyrannous hands of decay —
then let Omnipotence raise up from my earth
an inspired, poet olive tree!
Its roots will drink from my frame —
still moist, even then, with rapture...
drinking in the lights of my heart...
and drawing from it the secret of the flame!
Until, O my Creator, when my elements
have filled its fibers and its roots,
it starts up, its leaves all trembling
with the burning of sense and the glow of feeling.
Nablus — Fadwa Tuqan
If you would know yourself truly, and discern your faults... seek solitude from time to time...
How do you make your husband happy?... Do not go to extremes in contentment; rather, instill in your husband the spirit of ambition and enterprise. And do not be selfish, forcing him to confine his attention to you alone, when there are others who stand in need of some of his attention.
Do not chatter at a time when silence is sweet to him. Do not make him miserable with the jealousy your imagination paints for you when you notice in him certain courtesies his work obliges him to; and know that life is too short to bear wrangling.
Do not run after love... Love will knock at your door of its own accord at the proper time.
The chastity of every maiden is a tightly woven fabric: of her morals, of her nerves, of the constitution of her body, and of her thinking... The girl who is careless of her chastity finds the whole law of her morals collapsing with it.
Man is a big child... so be to him the mother, the friend, the "nanny," and the beloved!
Come, go out to meet life... for life itself is worth your living... it is not empty of beauty, as you imagine.
