Woman in Full Hijab in the Downpour

Until when? I am tired of fighting. Fighting the past, the future, the present. Fighting forever? Only to raise the ridiculous flag of "conquest" over narrow private domains? or public ones? - cell, cell, solitude! armed with weapons of self-defence, from sword and machete to the atom bomb! and armed with terror! terror of sleeping, terror of waking, terror of drinking or eating, terror of seeing the enemy in a poem, in a petal, in a drop of dew, in a poet, in the moonlight, behind every tree, The enemy! The enemy! forever seeing enemies! forever being the enemy! and in the end, for what? I am tired of turning to stone of turning mute - without words, without song, without dance - at the feet of a loveless god an unforgiving god; at the feet of an angry god, brawling, wrathful, forever wrathful! I am tired of the difficult god of this wrath. My love! My love! Nothing is easier than understanding one another: the other! Come into me with the ray of a lit lamp, warm and smiling, behind this fog: take me far away from all difficulties. Let "time" - under this black overcoat - have one meaning for you and me. Come into me in reconciliation with all the seconds that remain with every grain of sand, every oleander leaf; in reconciliation with the downpour even this downpour whose cold needles - by mistake! - have numbed my hands and turned them blue! so blue. Talk to me! "Tomorrow" will it be a pool with the sight of a leaf trembling, in the dark? or will it be like a white flight in delightful, shining spaces? far and near. Behind every veil, in every form even the tiniest particles of my system want you with my tomorrow with all tomorrows. My hands have gone numb. Come! I have surrendered to the call of my heart: my love! That night what was it? Where did that darkness between you and me come from? - like a veil of thick cloud over the face of the moon - and the monster of separation, where was it hiding? My love! our bodies will fill the distance. Every step every moment every smile every word can be a bridge between you and me. Cross and cross and cross and run your hand over the deepest valley of the body of the earth and listen to the melodies of the soul of the soil our soil, our soil, our soil; Come close! from soil to soil! from body to body, cross the distances and come to the depths of the grain of soil in my arms, to my weeping with your weeping to my laughter from your laughter. Do stones ever shed tears together? Do stones ever laugh together? And what thing I wonder on this whole planet takes your hands - in sleep and in waking - into its hands trembles, burning with love for you, sheds tears sheds tears and a thousand times a thousand times drop by drop the beauty of your eyes your name and your gaze upon the breast of existence hangs? Come close! Cross the distances from your body to the depths of my body: with trembling with weeping with laughter with forgiving with asking; then you will see I was not only a "body" - like a broken stone, under the feet of every passer-by, every rain, every blow of wrath - just as you were not only a "body" never only! Nothing is easier than understanding one another, like an illumination from the heart of "time" into the heart of the "self" I tremble! My hands have grown hot; hot from the cold? What is this? Tell me! this veil? this darkness, still here again tonight, between you and me? Talk to me! word by word claw at the veil of darkness and say: what colour are your eyes tonight? Say it! what colour am I in your eyes? - the colour of a nothing? crumbled? worthless? torn to pieces? more useless than the handkerchief now in my fist? Say it! what colour is your sky tonight? the sky you used to speak of, has it been torn to pieces? And the horizon? that distant shining horizon, has it faded now are your gazelle eyes colourless now? without a message? two cold empty hollows? and a nothing - This cannot be! This is a lie they grew in the soil of wrath they chanted and chanted into my ear Talk to me, my love. This separation is futile, this cell, cell, solitude: this darkness between us; this bitter darkness that hurled me to the coldest point of hell, - distance! "Time" passes, the only chance for our love is passing and the short chance to blossom in the garden. Say it! what colour are your dreams tonight? Particle by particle, all my heart wants to take on the colour of your dream all my heart like a thing that takes on the colour of your dream: your beloved. "Self" or "other"? Nothing is easier than understanding one another. Cross over, come into me above all the borders of the earth above today, come near, nearer than the sound of the downpour, on the drum of the fingernails. My love nothing is easier than understanding one another: word by word, come into me, into the land of eternal peace without defeat without victory - without fighting. Naked I have wept in your arms in your bed on your chest. I have talked with you through all these nights through all these days through all your separations with all my poems spoken or unspoken; "without god, without religion, without rite, without doctrine", I have joined the call of my heart: my love! I have joined the burning desire, caress to caress body to body love to love: and you far from all compulsion far from all wrath without cells. In my eyes under my skin you were something; something more than the white handkerchief in my hand: in the hand of a woman bound in a maghnaeh and a black overcoat in the muddy dusk of the city under the downpour searching for you ...