Sawt al-Mara

Why this perplexity? And why this questioning? Why, indeed, stand between the two?

Beautiful is this return, Aphrodite, and more beautiful still what it holds between its lines; but one gesture stopped me short... and shook my whole being: the gesture of that fearful hesitation. Is it for Aphrodite to stand perplexed? Or to cry out for succor, after her ears have been riven by the call and her heart has trembled at its echo... while her fingertips set to graving out its meanings? No! No, Aphrodite! This is not what we have come to expect of you—that you stand perplexed... questioning... hesitant, wanting and not wanting...

Rather we have known you as a force that acts, a spring that gives... a brook that waters our barren souls...

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Your struggle between yesterday and tomorrow is the very same struggle of man with that closed circle which is “life.” Make of it, then, a sweet present—not a yesterday that burns you, nor a tomorrow that you crave!!

And set those green needs loose from their hiding-places; perhaps in their release there is a new dawn, and a circle that is not closed...

Longing: Talk of the Heart

I long... how I long for you!

In the drowsy half-light of evenings, and in the unknown deeps of the dark.

Your arm alone knows what tenderness wrapped my arm,

and your heart alone knows what fire blazed.

I swear it: you, you are my king—

O this one whom she loved!

I long... how I long for you!

Sweet companionship with the glow of dawn.

Teasing... and the secret converse of eyes!

And oh my fear, after so long an age, lest I have forgotten:—

the soul's rapture in the shadow of your eyes,

and the startled flight of the faithful spirit when your memory flashes in the mind—

I press my cheek against your breast,

and find myself in a world not my own!

Where are you, where are you from me,

O this one whom she loved?

Behind what veils?

I know... I know

how long, how often you were far!

My Lord, Your mercy, my Lord:

why did You not take lovers two by two,

so that there would remain on earth no one seared like me, prey to burning grief and longing!?

And that unruly will of yours—tell it to be silent for a moment of time, and to grow still, with pride; no abasement befalls it if it does...

And hunger... hunger, Aphrodite, if in your hunger there is nourishment for them... for those you love; or eat their rich and precious provision, if it has come to weigh upon them.

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No, Aphrodite: people are not set against one another from without—they themselves are that very “other,” and they have been the victims of themselves, the victims of what their own hands, soiled with sin, have wrought!!

Say to them: I am society. I am she who will be the foundation-stone for those who come after me, as others were the abyss for me.

Say that to them and do not fear them, for they are a part of you...

You—it was you who drew near the one you called the enemy—and you, you who drove the beloved far away; and your hand, your hand that waved to this one and that, and your mouth that murmured this and that. By your Lord, try again: repeat the call your soul repeats to the beloved in a slumber of the will; repeat it to the supposed enemy and he becomes a beloved. Make him, like the distant one, a beloved—and do not wait for the far, far away.

Keep your bed soft and serene, with no thorn in it to sting you and no sorrow to gnaw at your soul. Say: I am a human being fashioning the universe in which there is neither sin nor transgression.

Damascus — Abla al-Khoury