The poet says that he feels in his poem something of the spirit of September and its glad tidings — though the spirit of September is too far for longing to reach and too deep for feeling to fathom... In compliance with the wish of Mr. Jareer Abu-Haidar, we here publish his poem "Do Not Remind Me" in the September issue...
Pluck out my memory — feeling has run dry,
dried is that tender sap from my blossoms and my boughs.
Pluck it out in your long nights;
no fuel is left me within my breast.
Shatter it when the road turns harsh,
twisting through the folds of the barren heights.
Shatter it — youth is lost out of my life,
for true youth is in the face of the newborn.
Shatter it in mercy, and close the book;
banish me toward your distant past.
The rapture of my breast has been traded for numbness;
my morning is no longer anything new.
*
Leave me, and look out upon the breast of spring,
where dawn is met by thousands of processions.
There is in my heart no breeze of it, nor
in my ribs any perfume of roses.
The festival's flower has died in my breast, and
no melody of any anthem remains.
The magic of the feast has died, has fled — though once
there were a thousand feasts on the road to you!
In the days when a single hour, had it held me
in your arms, held the whole of existence;
when my rapture stood above all wishes —
nay, farther than the very realms of immortality;
when all my secrets were yours —
my smile, and a glow upon my cheeks;
when my dawns and my dusks together
were my sweet tryst and the keeping of promises.
*
The blaze of noon and the pulsings of youth —
how often they quickened bliss within a vein.
In shreds my life was lost thereafter,
