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« I call you,
I grasp your hands
I kiss the earth beneath your sandals.’
Tawfiq Zayyad
This forest of light on your face;
can no one escape
the music of love?
Winter passes through your words
heaping their soul with white warmth
and golden fruit! What immortality
there is in mortal life!
What heady emotion they provoke,
what a song of pure sincerity they bring
into flower!
Snow! And time leaves its strong
blue flavour on hour hands!
It sings in the door key,
comes forward, smiles and flows
into the bed of the spring
that the day has become!
I have nothing to say to you. There you are,
like a bush of sparkling dreams
in the middle of a crowd that
moves as one
in tune with the beatings of the soul,
the noises of the marketplace
and the throng of children!
The language of snow like
a stainless arrow!
And this forest of light
on your face!
You, symbol of cold become Pity
in the secret trembling
of my heart!
You, colour of poem
with and intimate knowledge of forever!
You, intimate immensity
of what is true!
Translated from the French by Norton Hodges |
