Do You Remember?

... Perhaps it is “Cupid” who fluttered his wings over the young poetess's heart, so that her delicate feelings burst forth into the tenderest and dewiest of verse!
How lovely that Fadwa Tuqan should be presented to our readers with this throbbing, affectionate poem!!

Our meeting, and our wide-open road,
and the bank of the river,
and the nest in the “Flower Garden,”
and the kindly keeper of the garden,
and the green bench —
do you remember?

Our meeting — when my steps outrun
the appointed hour, making across the distance
for a corner there
on the pavement of the clamorous street,
and where I find you,
arrived, like me, before the appointed hour.
There my joy becomes two joys,
and I cross the street in two flashes,
as though my steps had two wings.
There I find you
in the anxiety of waiting,
stirred and excited,
crying out: How late you are!
And in one swift snatch of time
the pavement loses us — two souls
flying away with love —
and we bend toward the farther distance,
heart to heart, hand in hand.
Do you remember?

And we cross the bridge and go on
to our second road along the shore,
our easy, quiet road.
We walk and walk, and filling our two hearts
a flood of bliss that brims up in our eyes,
a flood of bliss that has no bound;
and our enchanted road stretches on —
a road of motherly shade, a long road.
I used to see its like in my dreams
before we met,
in the days when meeting was
a beautiful illusion,
like the impossible.
Do you remember?

And there it enfolds us
in its greening, tender heart —
there in the “Flower Garden” —
an arbor that watches over our evenings
as if it were a sparrows' nest;
and around us, out of the soul of April,
something of hidden suggestion, like magic,
beckons through shadow and light.
There we drew far,
in our secluded, grassy nest,
from the kindly keeper of the garden,
and our two eyes meet
in a glance thirsty for the spring,
and in one attraction our two souls wind
about an embrace of clinging passion
that has no end.

And we wish
the goddess of love had turned us to stone
while we sat upon the green bench,
heart to heart — never to be parted.
Do you remember?