“From my first lessons”

From my first lessons, my ears held onto A and B.

My father begged my heart’s hands and I held C tight.

I prove I’m a servant by the good idols I hold.

Love’s hermitage is my republic. If it burns, I’ll hold tight.

But for a bit, a shining sliver, who has such luck?

She is displacement. In all God’s earth, she is nowhere.

Where’s relief? Her dusty hem? Her sandaled feet?

No prayer could touch her, so I became her dirt road.

No nightingale amid blooming joy, I wilt.

No moth to her radiant face, I shiver.

Beyond any comb, my heart remains a tangle.

Desperate, I begged for justice. Irate, she refused:

My hand on a glass neck, kissing the cup,

I fell into base bliss. The sun stopped.

A coral branch gripped by sudden shock.

I abandoned prayer’s red face. I live in shame’s  yellow face.

Love’s rose garden is draped in lanterns:

Keep faith with the nightingale or the moth.

Love’s country holds to one law: don’t settle.

Lose the self, become bound, measure mud, burn:

As she steps on me: “I am out of place,” she says, “oh, sheikh.”

As her hands reach me: “My feet have found their place,” she says, “oh, sheikh.”

She’s lit my heart up, still: “I have no place,” she says, “oh, sheikh.”

What grace: she lights me on  fire and says, “Oh, sheikh!”

With a wink, she severs my liver’s every nerve.

She dammed my tears, blood streams instead.

It’s a wonder I live. My rival died from his sighs.

With a wink’s blade, she cut my chest open.

You have a mind. Study this line, not my soft shame.

One soft man can hold captive a thousand of stone.

I pushed my enemy into the sea of shame, but he didn’t drown.

In return for cold words, I sigh blazing breath.

One is drunk on the wine of egotism. Another on blight.

One’s perfection lacks. Another has perfected lack.

Among these, Hamdi can’t possibly sing.

Thank God, Mahwi knows: the world is a cesspool.

 

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