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!
Seeking Forgiveness
I wept
For a stream of love whose source dried up
For a firebrand that consumed itself
For a widowed moon
That witnessed the senses flare.
I wept for the lotus tree of the soul
Whose fragrance penetrates the cycle of dryness?
I wept profusely
For each bleeding part
For a song that followed
The funeral of my lightning
I wept long
Until I gave up seeking forgiveness from my tears
Look at me!
Am I not the eyelid squeezing the grapevine?
Ottawa, January 5, 2000
Trance
The final day in the calendar of my stars;
My consciousness renders me unconscious
I leave the darkness and the nadir of the brain,
Among bleaky flames of madness
Shrouded by waves
I cross the threshold of a trance
Like the light, I unfold my wings from my ribs
To nurture in a distant garden, a birth,
And from the rites of a wilderness pervaded by a desolate neighing ,
The elements of my being take shape
Unarmed, I call you,
Embroidered by a cascading glow
That dwells in the amber of the soul,
As another form,
I dissipate into the void before creation.
To reincarnate afresh.
Look you in the face, and become one with you,
Free of former weakness
And liberated from my past aberration.
Abu Dhabi, March 5, 1999