The Moon's Path

...Our paths in the mountain are tales...

One is for the red jars, in the elegance of their carrying, alighting on the earth, or not alighting.

And for the red cheeks, the color of delicious apples, if you like, or something like the colors of sunrise, when the light steals through from behind our high mountains...

And one is for singing and the drovers' chant, in the half-dark of nightfall, along which our young men come home, with slow steps, to warmth and well-being.

And one is for the grape clusters, in the vineyards.

And one is for the moon... as if the moon rose nowhere but there...

It was the tale of tales in the village...

And it was for love...

I wonder...? Is it still for love?

Or has love died on the paths of our village, the one on the white hill?!

And is it still for the moon, I wonder? Or has the moon turned his path away from it?

It was a bed of roses... and a rope of silk going and coming, never breaking except when the ropes of night break.

No — rather it was a lock of the moon's hair, which we tied down to the earth with our eyelashes.

...

...And on the path, where we live, we would glimpse the sweet girl in the windows of her house, wiping crystal with crystal, or smelling the pots of basil on the balcony, with a sweet nose that knows how to smell. Or shaking out the brown mat, for the feast day...

Then the sweet one would shut her window on us, or bury her head in the pot of basil, or the brown mat would fall from her hand, so that nothing remained in her hand but the stick, which she brandished at us in threat...

And the path kept walking us back and forth, in hopes that the owner of the crystal hand would come back to her window.

...

...And she waved to me, once, from above the path, from beneath the western windows of their house.

And she was, as I recall,

the color of blossoms, and the age of the moon.

Was it her pure, delicious hand that waved?

Or her eyes, whose color I do not know to this day?

In our house, some say they are the color of honey, and some say the color of wine...

And I, to this day, do not know the color of her eyes!..

Or was it, I wonder, her rose-colored dress that waved to me, from above, from beneath the windows of their house.

That day, I came to know "the moon's path" in our village. Before then, the path had been a road that led me home, to my mother's arms, on my way back from my grandmother's, in the neighboring village...

And the path became, from that day on — the day she waved to me from above — something with no beginning and no end.

A thing tied to my heart.

Every stone in it bound to my lashes.

...And I turned its stones to marble with my mouth, stone by stone, and no stone remained in it against which I had not pressed my forehead a thousand times.
And there is no boulder there in whose veins I have not carved my heart.
And no moon set, in our village in those years, except from there.
And no moon rose, except from her western house, which stood above the path...
And after me came the village boys, one upon another, waving to the girls in the windows, appearing for a moon and vanishing for a moon.
And they took to carving their hearts in the boulders...
But the sweet one, my sweet one from whose house the moon rose, waved to no one among the people but me, and my heart waved to no one but her on that path...

...

And the innocent tales followed one upon another, on the moon's path, in our village.
And it was as if the meager spring, below the path, had become a river in our village — the red jars on shoulders, coming and going, in the light of the moon...
And as if the spring gushed only under the moon, and its water dried up in the sun.
And no jar came back, as I recall — and the red jars recall — but full of perfumed water, with a red rose in its mouth, or a stalk of lily, or a sprig of basil.
Whence does the perfume come to those little red jars?..
Whence does the water come to that meager, trickling spring?
A tale known only to the spring, and the white valley, and the path above the spring and the valley... and us.

...

And what more is there to tell, of the moon's path in our village?
If you had seen it, you would know how the moon lives there among us, from the beginning of the night to the end of the night.
From the mountain to the sea... one single sweep of colors and shadows.
It turns the rock to marble...
And shatters the earth into gold...
The white earth in our valley crumbles into gold, or into silver the color of gold...
Who has ever known silver the color of gold?
If you had seen it... you would know how the shadows and the lights, the colors and the darknesses, and the phantoms, keep pace with one another in the curves, from chain to chain, from summit to summit, from hollow to hollow... flung loose here and gathered up there, as if the fingers of the jinn were touching them and letting them fall...

...

"The moon's path"... the moon's lips have been worn bare upon it...
And its stones worn bare by his footsteps, as if he knew no path but this one, on the night stroll he had made his habit.

...

I passed along it yesterday, in the night, and behold, it was another mirror going out — its soil grows nothing but stones.
Its soil is all mere soil.
And the house above it — its windows have been shuttered.
Its people went away and have not returned to this day.
Another mirror going out in my village.
And the sweet one who once waved to me from beneath the windows has hidden her rose-colored dresses away in her wardrobe...
And this moon still rises over the path, mournful in its passing...
Over a barren land... alone...
Where has love gone from our village?

...

I had it in my soul to build for the moon and the stars, and for love and my beloved, there, a palace of veins of pure marble...
To carry to it beds of roses from the land of Persia, and trellises of jasmine from the far islands.
And the perfumes of India and the lands of the Arabs, and censers of incense, and grains of musk
And to live there with the moon and the stars and love and my beloved...