I Want to Live

This is the name of the diwan by Mrs. Joumana Ahdab which appeared last month. It is a collection of verse in the French language, made up of short poems which the poetess has divided, according to the times of their composition, into four parts:

1 - I Want to Live
2 - The Green Hours
3 - Prayers
4 - A Complaint Against an Unknown

Whoever leafs through this little diwan cannot fail to be struck by Mrs. Joumana Ahdab's overflowing poetic spirit and her delicate sensibility... and he feels, too, a spirit of optimism and contentment flooding his heart.

Our colleague "Beirut" has rendered the first poem into Arabic, and we print it below — bearing in mind that the translation has robbed the poetic original of much of its worth and splendor:

I want to live,
to understand, to love,
to drink deep of life
to the very dregs

To be drunk with happiness,
and to breathe in the flowers,
to breathe them in forever,
to the last breath

I want to run in the wind's path,
to sink my teeth
into the glistening fruits;
I want to laugh, to drown in laughter,
and to weep,
and to strike out across the earth,
far, far away

I roam the lands and the gardens
and plunge my head into the jasmine;
I want to feel
my youth,
and to dance
to the point of rapture

I want to be happy,
and to see, to understand, to suffer,
in misery or in bliss —
I want to live.