Guest Poet: Nizar Qabbani (The Epic of Sadness)

Your love entered me...my lady

Into the cities of sadness

and I before you, never entered

the cities of sadness

I did not know...

that tears are the person

that a person without sadness

is only a shadow of a person...

 Excerpt from "The Epic of Sadness" by Nizar Qabanni 

If a person without sadness is only a shadow of a person, does that conversely mean that a person with sadness realizes the fullness of personhood? Or is that fallacious thinking? I do not know, but I doubt it.

But if it were so, I would overflow with personness. I would be the most complete person imaginable. People would stare at me on the streets and whisper in amazement at how much of a person I was.

I am so tired of feeling sad. 

Sometimes I forget I am sad, and I laugh and make others laugh. Sometimes we laugh so hard, we have difficulty breathing. Sometimes the others tell me how happy I make them, how much they enjoy my company. How much I am loved. Sometimes. 

Then the episode draws to an end, and the others go home. And I am left alone with my thoughts and myself.

I have spent most of my life by myself, with my thoughts. As a child, I spent the vast majority of my days locked outdoors, alone, while my siblings and mother stayed inside. At night, I was locked in my room, alone. 

My father conditioned me not to cry. He began when I was two weeks old and started spanking me every time I cried. The family story goes that his method was such a great success, I soon learned not to cry. I guess I was a quick study.

Without going into a lot of how did I get Here from There (and it was an epic journey), I now am able to cry. Sometimes I wonder if it's a mathematical equation, that I must shed a certain number of tears in my lifetime to "catch up" to an equal sum or something. If it is, surely to God I am nearly there?

I spend an inordinate amount of mental energy reminding myself it is not a weakness to cry, to feel sadness. I spend an inordinate amount of mental energy trying to convince myself there is nothing inherently wrong with me, that the reason I am alone is not because of some intrinsic flaw. I spend a significant amount of time telling myself I will be loved, I will not end my days alone, I am worthy and deserving and will be vindicated.

And so today, my guest poet is once again Nizar Qabbani with his exquisite "The Epic of Sadness." I guess it's better than a sharp stick in the eye. Sorry I can't reach into my bag of tricks and haul out a smile for you. Thank you for reading and hang in there. Tomorrow's got to be a better day. ~~GHC

Your love taught me to grieve
and I have been in need, for centuries
a woman to make me grieve
for a woman, to cry upon her arms
like a sparrow
for a woman to gather my pieces
like shards of broken crystal

Your love has taught me, my lady, the worst habits
it has taught me to read my coffee cups
thousands of times a night
to experiment with alchemy,
to visit fortune tellers

It has taught me to leave my house
to comb the sidewalks
and search your face in raindrops
and in car lights
and to peruse your clothes
in the clothes of unknowns
and to search for  your image
even…..even…..
even in the posters of advertisements
your love has taught me
to wander around, for hours
searching for a gypsies hair
that all gypsies women will envy
searching for a face, for a voice
which is all the faces and all the voices…

Your love entered me…my lady
into the cities of sadness
and I before you, never entered
the cities of sadness
I did not know…
that tears are the person
that a person without sadness
is only a shadow of a person…

Your love taught me
to behave like a boy
to draw your face with chalk
upon the wall
upon the sails of fishermen's boats
on the Church bells, on the crucifixes,
your love taught me, how love,
changes the map of time…
Your love taught me, that when I love
the earth stops revolving,
Your love taught me things
that were never accounted for 
So I read children's fairytales
I entered the castles of Jennies
and I dreamt that she would marry me
the Sultan's daughter
those eyes..
clearer than the water of a lagoon
those lips…
more desirable than the flower of pomegranates
and I dreamt that I would kidnap her like a knight                                                      and I dreamt that I would give
her necklaces of pearl and coral
Your love taught me, my lady,
what is insanity
it taught me…how life may pass
without the Sultan's daughter arriving

Your love taught me
How to love you in all things
in a bare winter tree,
in dry yellow leaves
in the rain, in a tempest,
in the smallest cafe, we drank in,
in the evenings…our black coffee

Your love taught me…to seek refuge
to seek refuge in hotels without names
in churches without names…
in cafes without names…

Your love taught me…how the night
swells the sadness of strangers
It taught me…how to see Beirut 
as a  woman…a tyrant of temptation
as a woman, wearing every evening
the most beautiful clothing she possesses
and sprinkling upon her breasts perfume
for the fisherman, and the princes
Your love taught me  how to cry without crying
It taught me how sadness sleeps
Like a boy with his feet cut off
in the streets of the Rouche and the Hamra

Your love taught me to grieve
and I have been needing, for centuries
a woman to make me grieve
for a woman, to cry upon her arms
like a sparrow
for a woman to gather my pieces
like shards of broken crystal

I Have No Power - Nizar Qabbani

Guest poet at ChickenScratches again today. I promise to post something of my own soon. 

This man knew women. Oh, to have been loved, or to be loved, by such a man! The inimitable Nizar Qabbani, again:

I Have No Power

'I have no power to change you
or explain your ways
Never believe a man can change a woman
Those men are pretenders
who think
that they created woman
from one of their ribs
Woman does not emerge from a man's rib's, not ever,
it's he who emerges from her womb
like a fish rising from depths of water
and like streams that branch away from a river
It's he who circles the sun of her eyes
and imagines he is fixed in place

I have no power to tame you
or domesticate you
or mitigate your first instincts
This task is impossible
I've tested my intelligence on you
also my dumbness
Nothing worked with you, neither guidance
nor temptation
Stay primitive as you are

I have no power to break your habits
for thirty years you have been like this
for three hundred years
a storm trapping in a bottle
a body by nature sensing the scent of a man
assaults it by nature
triumphs over it by nature

Never believe what a man says about himself
that he is the one who makes the poems
and makes the children
It is the woman who writes the poems
and the man who signs his name to them
It is the woman who bears the children
and the man who signs at the maternity hospital
that he is the father

I have no power to change your nature
my books are of no use to you
and my convictions do not convince you
nor does my fatherly council do you any good
you are the queen of anarchy, of madness, of belonging
to no one
Stay that way
You are the tree of femininity that grows in the dark
needs no sun or water
you the sea princess who has loved all men
and loved no one
slept with all men… and slept with no one
you are the Bedouin woman who went with all the tribes
and returned a virgin
Stay that way.' 

Nizar Qabbani

In The Summer by Nizar Qabbani

Guest poet at ChickenScratches today.~~GHC

In The Summer

In the summer
I stretch out on the shore
And think of you
Had I told the sea
What I felt for you,
It would have left its shores,
Its shells,
Its fish,
And followed me.

~~by Nizar Qabbani
Translated by B. Frangieh And C. Brown