To You To Me To Her Poem by Habib Fares

I beg your pardon my beautiful butterfly for the explosions of some of my wandering spirit within its swarthy gloominess incarceration.

Do not ask why my wounds choose you in their balsamic journeys. For I have no authority over their options.

Perhaps they curse from afar the warmth of the place, or perhaps they possess a seventh sense to guide them towards the humanitarian storms described by sages to calm the turbulent souls.

You may disclose secretly to yourself a deficit of what is required by it and a doubt of the capacity it has been granted by the injurers and thought that a certain error has put you in the rank of prudent.

Do not digress much my Madam. Lost spirits do not lose totally their propriety.

I would not hide a secret from you, both my successful and fail journeys have got the same compass. I do not know whether it was good or bad luck.

My compass Madam always tends towards contradictions. It instinctively adored them, adhered to them and still.

I do not know why it discovered you that fast and why it preferred since her discovery to never depart from you.

Contradictions… I can assure you that are the secret of my departure to you even when you are faraway.

I see you, honey, like me. A tent that embroidered by the fingertips of passengers from and to all directions.

Fingertips, soft as the downs of squabs and rough as firestones.

By the harmonious and unharmonious threads of the sun, earth and stars. After being moistened by the morning sweat, the tears of disappointed lasses and the water of roses and mints.

Then arranged by the breath of lovers and the moans of the failures. A tent shines with rays and colours. Amid the desert of the non-place and time.

Hosting those who are crossing towards the insecurity coasts.

Do not ask me how I see in you the comic baby crawling amid illusions and the sober mother breastfeeding middle – aged man who lived all his life looking for compassion.

Do not ask me how I see you combining between identity and non-affiliation, affiliation and non-identity. Do not ask me why I find you combining all civilizations in one person who failed to find a civilization to shelter her.

My soul mate. When my sadness rides the wings of breeze to travel to you, they do so to escape from their self to their self.

When my pains rise from within the talons of the no dream to meet you, they search for their loneness in the harbours of your loneness.

It has been long since I have stopped questioning myself about the meaning of the qualitative magnets that can only attract and gravitate towards similar.

Just as many things in the universe cannot be explained physically, like the flame of fire and the ability of gravity, there is also no materialistic interpretation of the attraction of souls, injuries, sadness and pains to each other’s.

I beg your pardon Madam if my “heresies” took you by surprise.

If I found myself in you, I want you to find yourself in me even through my verbal “heresies” that are nothing more than a summary of the sad air of the self that no longer oblivious to speak what’s considered very carefully in the study of speech.

When we shelter to poetry that some consider as “heresy” we do that spontaneously as if our self-language says, “you frivolously play your corruption with earth because you are not poets and you don’t comprehend the poets’ words”.

Madame Queen. Do not despair. Stay as you are in your bee’s kingdom tirelessly sucking with your great love the fragrances of flowers and vaccinate the sprout of fruits with your sweet saliva to feed the stomach’s hungers and the relinquish souls till when you surrender yourself peacefully even if they surrender theirs unmercifully.

Tomorrow our souls will follow to the vast universe, those who preceded us, of anguished poets, painting with them a beautifier portrait for this narrow depressed universe.

Until then let me collect from your florid cheeks the warm dewdrops which they converted them from happy tears into sad clouds. Perhaps I could whet you a smile and some strength to help you completing the mission.

Let me plunge to the depth of your eyes’ ocean to arrive to the bottom of myself so perhaps I can find my little ambrosial fish that they just snatch from me to the surprise of time.

I shall embraced her strongly to my chest, kiss her with the warmest possible of my lips, farewell her again saying:

” I have understood the message, you are still alive my Honey! ”

My beautiful butterfly. Reassure me, always, about yourself. Reassure me about her.

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Written in Arabic in Sydney,2006. Translated by the poet.
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P.S. As poems loose alot of their essence and technique, when translated to other languages - particularly rhyme and rhythm - members with English as their first language are welcome to edit or paraphrase any of my poems. Names of editors will be acknowledged where ever the edited poem published. With many thanks.