LOW SKY (Washington Square Journal) 

There’s a love walking on two silken feet
happy with its estrangement in the streets,
a love small and poor made wet by a passing rain
that it overflows onto passersby:
My gifts are larger than I am
eat my wheat
and drink my wine
my sky is on my shoulders and my earth is yours . . .

Did you smell the jasmine’s radiant blood
and think of me
then wait with me for a green-tailed bird
that has no name?

There’s a poor love staring at the river
in surrender to summoning: Where do you run to
seahorse?
Soon the sea will suck you in
so walk leisurely to your chosen death,
O seahorse!

Were you as two embankments for me
and was the place as it should be
light-footed on your memories?
What songs do you love
what songs? The  ones   
that speak about love’s thirst,
or about a time that has passed?

There’s a poor love, one-sided
and quite serene it doesn’t break
your select day’s crystal
and doesn’t light a fire in a cold moon
in your bed,
you don’t sense it when you cry from an apprehension,
which might replace it,
you don’t know what to feel when you embrace
yourself between your arms!
Which nights do you want, which nights
and what color are those eyes that you dream
with when you dream?

There is a poor love, and two-sided
it diminishes the number of those in despair
and lifts the pigeons’ throne on both sides.
You must, then, by yourself lead
this swift spring to the one you love.
Which time do you want, which time
that I may become its poet, just like that: whenever
a woman goes to her secret in the evening
she finds a poet walking in her thoughts.
Whenever a poet dives into himself
he finds a woman undressing before his poem . . .

Which exile do you want?
Will you come with me, or walk alone
in your name as an exile that adorns exile
with its glitter?

There’s a love passing through us,
without us noticing, 
and neither it knows nor do we know
why a rose in an ancient wall makes us fugitives           
and why a girl at the bus stop cries,                  
bites on an apple then laughs and cries:
Nothing, nothing more
than a bee passing through my blood . . .

There’s a poor love, it contemplates
at length the passersby, and chooses
the youngest moon among them: You are in need
of a lower sky,
be my friend and the sky will expand
for the selfishness of two who do not know
to whom they should give their flowers . . .
Maybe it meant me, maybe
it meant us and we didn’t notice

There is a love . . .

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© Copyright, Mahmoud Darwish.
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