The White Room...!

Perhaps she is still of the age of roses, this Iraqi student who composes verse! Could she be a new "Mala'ika" sprung up on the riverbank of Amarah in southern Iraq?

And I went asking my white room about you and about my love
And I went — alas for hopes! — they failed, and my echo gave them back

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And I asked the star about you .. even the fire .. even the evenings
And I found them keeping the pledge and tending my memories

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And I asked it about everything that passed within it, in the nights
And I asked it — would that it had known my secrets and my state

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The white room still keeps the old pledge
The white room has not forgotten the love, nor forgotten the bliss

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It will go on remembering every day when a meeting held you within it
And it will go on remembering every moment, whenever evening comes to mind

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My careworn heart will visit it whenever its sorrows stir
And will visit it every day, to call back its melodies there

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For the white room knows all my griefs and my gladness
And in it two hands were clasped — so where, O days, is my yesterday?

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Yesterday — how sweet it was! Where is yesterday, O my far-off yesterday?
Would that the days of happiness — would that they might return

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I shall go on remembering my white room, resting place of your memories
And go on worshiping it, and worshiping what remains of your evenings

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And today, after despair, my weary, sorrowing heart comes back
To the memories it returns — and to what lies hidden — and the moaning melts it

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But if, after a while, what throbbing is left in my heart should brim over
Do not suppose I shall go on waiting for you, O beloved

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For treachery has burst what weeping remained in my heart
And treachery has put out the flame of sacred love, and its blaze

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And tomorrow you will try to bring back yesterday, or to tell over the melodies
But my melodies and my heart, when you return, will be in silence

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And I shall have bidden my melodies and my hopes farewell in a grave
And you would see me laugh, if you but knew some part of my affair

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Then you would go asking my white room about my secret and about me
And you would go asking it — and does wishing avail?

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No .. do not ask, if you come one day seeking to bring back
The memory of the nights .. for the nights do not return

Amarah — Iraq