Longing

... And here is a splendid poetic breath from the poet of "'Abqar," sent especially from São Paulo to "The Woman's Voice"

Long has longing dwelt in me, and thirst grown insistent,
for nights in the high vineyards
where the full moon tempts the maidens of the home ground,
as though the moon, among the clouds,
had gathered the light of all the stars
and poured it through a window in the sky.

Long have I yearned for the flutter of eyelids
quivering like a bangle on the wrist,
while longing blazes hot, and the stillness —
its nights of drowsy stars —
my mouth completes the melodies in them
before the singers play them.

Where are the trysts by the river
we sought in the drunkenness of the sober?
And where those black eyes
dreaming, like the grape cluster, of wine —
and kisses, and the clink of cups,
and peals of laughter, and songs?

Longing presses me for a shade, and a lute —
but would the lute meet its echoes
if we went back to slake our burning hearts?
And the river — would we know its shadows?
And its water — is it still the same water,
or, having passed, does it never return?

Alas for it, the birthplace of my inspiration —
shall I one day go back to it,
to dig up my dreams along the bank?
Or is it, O my heart, that at sunset
the feet of others upon those paths
have blotted out the traces of my feet?

Who will grant me — now the ghada embers have gone to ash —
to behold the snow, luminous and dewy,
and the white hair of the old women,
and to rake the ashes in the hearth?
Perhaps, if my hand turns them over,
I may see a glimmer of a time gone by.

Or are there new embers in the hearth —
so that if the far-off one came back beside it
he would find the fire only adding ice
to the desolation of the house and of his heart,
and the white hair cast away
by snowstorms in a distant valley?

O my night, long have you lasted, and long the yearning,
and the strings have grown weary for the lute,
and the dust of years has drowned the lute.
How often has a beak carried in the spring,
and nests trembled with feathers,
and a captive nightingale won back its song!

Enough, O night! There is no darkness
but has, behind the hills, a daybreak.
If clouds shroud the sky,
we bring the moon out from behind the clouds;
and if we rise to defy fate,
the hands of the sleeping leap to the oar.

Then the shore hurries to meet the ships,
and the flag stretches up toward the heights,
and the cedars bend to embrace their sons —
until, when the glad tidings spread through the hills,
the summits come streaming down to the shores,
singing, to welcome those who return.

Then my pains, and the memory of them,
will fold their two wings over my wound;
for when I meet my mother,
if she rings me round with her arms,
I shall find in the pupils of her eyes
the sweetest of my days, and the loveliest.

São Paulo — Chafic Maalouf