Poem 021: Tell Me, Darkness Poem by Samer Madbak

Darkness, Darkness, tell me, who am I?
Tell me what is this that throbs in me?
Is it sane if someone wants to die?
Is he sober he who strives to be?

Darkness, Darkness, what’s beyond this strife?
What is this that flutters in my soul?
Is it human gallantry for life?
Is it aptness to forsake this Whole?

Darkness, Darkness, I am stultified
What’s the purport of my entity?
What’s to covet on the other side?
Why the reticence, this density?

“Patience, patience, bard of idle quest
What you ask we both cannot explain
Yield, like me, and set your mind to rest,
Truth is barred from us, to seek is vain.”

“But come, my peer, come join my orphic gloom
And let us nurse it, this, our prime desire
For soon the keeper of this silent tomb
Will touch our blindness with celestial fire! ”


Beirut
January 26th 1988