Badia Kashgari

Badia Kashgari Poems

Badia Kashgari Biography

Badia Kashgari was born in Taif, Saudi Arabia. Mainly self-taught, she was employed as a teacher at the age of 16 and later earned an honours degree in English literature from the King Abdulaziz University in Jeddah. She has published numerous books of poetry and anthologies, and her work has been translated to the German and Danish.)

The Best Poem Of Badia Kashgari

Between Adam & Eve

Did I not come into your life passively?
Or from the zenith of my mind?
May be!
Or perhaps from the depth of my madness!
Or to escape from tumultuous rain!
No.
Rather, I came from the serenity of my clouds,
I came to affirm your being.
Do you know what it means to let me also be!
When we met, I had a reason.
You were the tears and the kohl in my eyes,
When you evoke them, the comets burst in green.
I offered you the humanity of my inner female self,
While you cared merely for he Eve in me,
As does a monk to his psalms.
Like you, I too at the beginning was.
Nine months in the womb I stayed,
And by labor I was born.
With closed eyes, I too arrived.
Why should one of us be the victim!
I cared less when we met
What has been said over the centuries.
I revered you as a branch blessed by plenty,
A song of love hummed in the throats.
Feeble and burdened I did carry you for nine months.
In me you were the seasons and moving waves.
Where is that Adam like a fabled bird
Echoing my voice rather than strangling it!
Where is he, the epitome of my secrets,
While I contain his!
I cared less did when we met,
Whether You or I was the lesser.
I cared even less about Eves deceit or her weakness.
Nothing shall destroy my omnipresence,
No matter how one refers to me.
My existence is proved by my voice,
And not merely by gendered language.
I came into your life to sing your name as a fresh dawn.
Nothing will dampen my spirits,
Not even a humble dwelling in the Harem.
The melody of your voice shall persist in my verse
As an echo preceded my sighs.
You, the dawn of my beginning, and the core of my conjecture.
When I came to you, I converse with myself,
And liberate the future from the fetters of yesterdays.
Because you alone my present and my life to come,
And your eyes my fields and sun,
I crowned my kingdom by openness of your sharing,
So you may be reincarnated as the beginning.
And return to the land of my faith.
In the book of my life, I inscribed you to be,
Do you know what it means to let me also be!

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