I said: Depart
There were thorns of pride in my mouth
Combing the words,
Adorning them like a star in a tavern of the blind.
I thought light was virtual,
That it would applaud me—break me—
Hang me on the eyelashes of a cloud
Then drop me into the pit of echo.

I went on,
Casting my shadow on the roads
Like someone dragging his soul in the exile of himself,
Chanting myself—driving away whoever came,
As if the heart were a well dug in the back of the wind
Overflowing only with a bitter note
That knows neither remorse nor repentance.

I said: We parted
And the sky witnessed my tone—
Like a wave breaking the rock of life
Without greeting what remained.
You were the burning of my patience,
But I expelled you from my blood,
Cut the thread of longing in ignorance,
And deluded myself I would stand straight
If I cast you from the orbit of my heart.

But I awoke—
Awoke to the impact of regret
Opening my chest like a wound,
Rousing the wreckage of my ruined years.

You—
Who descended upon my silence
Like a cloud over barren land—
My dreams withered like pages
Eaten by the pen, unsaved by ink.
You used to spread the dew of your voice
Over the dryness of my spirit,
Drip light into my desolate heart,
Send your shadow in the evening
To speak to my night of the warmth of apology.
But your heart was distant—
It resided elsewhere,
Saying: Yes.

The wind told me
A woman gives you the warmth of morning,
Her coffee, her promise,
Her voice that soars with your laughter
Like pure song,
Opening to you the dream
That pain had closed in my blood.

Ah, my hand—
The hand that rejected you when you were a promise,
When you were light in the darkness.
I still hear your voice
Carrying me like a child to a garden of your warm palms,
That hand
That used to sing in my blood and dreams.

I was wrong—
But error does not mend time,
Does not return the stairs to childhood,
Does not open a door shut by delusion.
You are the light I was too late to touch,
The one I reached after absence
Only to find in your eyes
Someone else had rekindled you.

And today I walk—
A shadow beside the feet of one who does not see,
A shadow stumbling in a melody
That shows no respect
For what remains inside of my waiting.
Inside me, a voice repeats:
If only your patience had not snapped,
If only your silence had spoken before the echo died.
But longing
Tears the old paper,
And death assails me at the tip of the pen,
Whispering: Were you a woman
Who could not shelter the heart that gave?
Or were you a pain
No one saw
Except in the throb of regret?

Now you have found the light—
In a face that resembles the purity of my days,
A face that gives you back the dream stolen from you,
While I am nothing but yesterday’s cloud
That melted on the shoulder of pain—
And kept raining
When the cloud was gone.

Irbid – Jordan 12-03-1984