Miscast II
~ Amy Lowell

My heart is like a cleft pomegranate
Bleeding crimson seeds
And dripping them on the ground.
My heart gapes because it is ripe and over-full,
And its seeds are bursting from it.

But how is this other than a torment to me!
I, who am shut up, with broken crockery,
In a dark closet!

Love Song for Words
~ Nazik al-Mala’ika

Why do we fear words
when they have been rose-palmed hands,
fragrant, passing gently over our cheeks,
and glasses of heartening wine
sipped, one summer, by thirsty lips?

Why do we fear words
when among them are words like unseen bells,
whose echo announces in our troubled lives
the coming of a period of enchanted dawn,
drenched in love, and life?
So why do we fear words?

We took pleasure in silence.
We became still, fearing the secret might part our lips.
We thought that in words laid an unseen ghoul,
crouching, hidden by the letters from the ear of time.
We shackled the thirsty letters,
we forbade them to spread the night for us
as a cushion, dripping with music, dreams,
and warm cups.

Why do we fear words?
Among them are words of smooth sweetness
whose letters have drawn the warmth of hope from two lips,
and others that, rejoicing in pleasure
have waded through momentary joy with two drunk eyes.
Words, poetry, tenderly
turned to caress our cheeks, sounds
that, asleep in their echo, lies a rich color, a rustling,
a secret ardor, a hidden longing.

Why do we fear words?
If their thorns have once wounded us,
then they have also wrapped their arms around our necks
and shed their sweet scent upon our desires.
If their letters have pierced us
and their face turned callously from us
Then they have also left us with an oud in our hands
And tomorrow they will shower us with life.
So pour us two full glasses of words!

Tomorrow we will build ourselves a dream-nest of words,
high, with ivy trailing from its letters.
We will nourish its buds with poetry
and water its flowers with words.
We will build a balcony for the timid rose
with pillars made of words,
and a cool hall flooded with deep shade,
guarded by words.

Our life we have dedicated as a prayer
To whom will we pray . . . but to words?

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Had the Fortune-teller Told Me
~ Lamia Abbas Amara
Translated by Hend Saeed

If only the fortune-teller had told me that

you would, one day, be my beloved

I wouldn’t have written love poems for a man

but would have prayed, mute,

that you would always be my lover

If only the fortune-teller had told me that

I would touch the face of that high moon

I wouldn’t have dallied with the pebbles on the walls

or strung together the beads of my hopes

If only the fortune-teller had told me that

my beloved

would be a prince, astride a ruby horse

life would have pulled me along with its blonde braids

and I wouldn’t have dreamed of my death

If only the fortune-teller had told me that

my beloved, on a snowy night

would hold the sun in his hands

my lungs would’ve blossomed

and yesterday’s worries would have shrunk in my eyes

If only the fortune-teller had told me that

I would meet you in this labyrinth

I would have cried for nothing in this world

I would have gathered my tears

all my tears

for the day when you abandon me

The Lake in the Rain
~ J.R. Solonche

The lake in the rain
remembers when
it was the rain
and quietly cries
in the depth of its sleep,
which, if you carefully listen,
sounds like rain on a lake.