And then the day came,
when the risk
to remain tight
in a bud
was more painful
than the risk
it took
to blossom.

-Anais Nin, Risk

أطرقُ بابًا
أفتحهُ
لا أبصر إلا نفسي بابًا
أفتحهُ
أدخلُ
لا شيء سوى بابٍ آخر
يا ربي
كمْ بابًا يفصلني عني؟

― عدنان الصائغ

-سوزان عليوان

في تلك الخنادقِ التي عشتها ، وجدتني أكتُبُ، وأقرا وأقرا الكثير من الكتب، كأن "الحياة هي دائماً في مكانٍ آخر" كما ذهبت رواية ميلان كونديرا.

-عدنان الصائغ

"Whatever's burning in me is mine! and I'll split this town in two and everything in it before I'll let you put it out!"

-Toni Morrison, Sula

"It is good to love as much as one can, for therein lies true strength, and he who loves much does much and is capable of much, and that which is done with love is well done."

-Van Gogh

When a storm comes up at night and the wind is crying,
When the trees are moaning like masts on laboring ships,
I wake in fear and put out my hand to find you
With your name on my lips.
No pain that the heart can hold is like to this one—
To call, forgetting, into aching space,
To reach out confident hands and find beside you
Only an empty place.
This should atone for the hours when I forget you.
Take then my offering, clean and sharp and sweet,
An agony brighter than years of dull remembrance.
I lay it at your feet.

-Aline Kilmet, Atonement

I want you to know
one thing.

You know how this is:
if I look
at the crystal moon, at the red branch
of the slow autumn at my window,
if I touch
near the fire
the impalpable ash
or the wrinkled body of the log,
everything carries me to you,
as if everything that exists,
aromas, light, metals,
were little boats
that sail
toward those isles of yours that wait for me.

Well, now,
if little by little you stop loving me
I shall stop loving you little by little.

If suddenly
you forget me
do not look for me,
for I shall already have forgotten you.

If you think it long and mad,
the wind of banners
that passes through my life,
and you decide
to leave me at the shore
of the heart where I have roots,
remember
that on that day,
at that hour,
I shall lift my arms
and my roots will set off
to seek another land.

But
if each day,
each hour,
you feel that you are destined for me
with implacable sweetness,
if each day a flower
climbs up to your lips to seek me,
ah my love, ah my own,
in me all that fire is repeated,
in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten,
my love feeds on your love, beloved,
and as long as you live it will be in your arms
without leaving mine.

-Pablo Neruda, If you forgot me

-Murakami, Kafka On the Shore

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
Write, for example, 'The night is shattered
and the blue stars shiver in the distance.'
The night wind revolves in the sky and sings.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.

Through nights like this one I held her in my arms
I kissed her again and again under the endless sky.

She loved me sometimes, and I loved her too.
How could one not have loved her great still eyes.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
To think that I do not have her. To feel that I have lost her.

To hear the immense night, still more immense without her.
And the verse falls to the soul like dew to the pasture.

What does it matter that my love could not keep her.
The night is shattered and she is not with me.

This is all. In the distance someone is singing. In the distance.
My soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

My sight searches for her as though to go to her.
My heart looks for her, and she is not with me.

The same night whitening the same trees.
We, of that time, are no longer the same.

I no longer love her, that's certain, but how I loved her.
My voice tried to find the wind to touch her hearing.

Another's. She will be another's. Like my kisses before.
Her voice. Her bright body. Her infinite eyes.

I no longer love her, that's certain, but maybe I love her.
Love is so short, forgetting is so long.

Because through nights like this one I held her in my arms
my soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

Though this be the last pain that she makes me suffer
and these the last verses that I write for her.

-Pablo Neruda, Tonight I Can Write the Saddest Lines
*Translated by W.S. Merwin.

I should start mentioning the translators when possible underneath everything not written originally in English.

I'm not crying, you are!

The old man wakes up and for the first few minutes his world is untouched. He slowly blinks at the sun. One blink, another, and her figure is there again; faint like a transparent cloth and familiar like the lace on it.
He smiles.
The road to the kitchen is filled with the sound of her Mary Jane shoes. The smell of the breakfast he makes is mixed with signature perfume; Jasmine and Coco.
The Daily news are upsetting. She asks why. Her memory only lasts two days and his, despite his age, a lifetime.
His nephews call him in the afternoon. "It's Jane's birthday today. She would be thrilled if you come over." So of course he obliges.
He takes the bus then spends 10 minutes walking. She walks beside him still, asking about how his mother is doing. "She's been dead for twenty years, dear." and her face falls. "I'm sorry. I know she meant a lot to you." She replies.
After returning he felt a sort of serenity for having seen his family again. Jane has grown to be a brilliant young woman, and even a bigger bibliophile than him.
In his dream he sees the fire of the dragon again. He sees the dragon as it bends and curves in the sky and wakes up with a vision. He will speak of her. His Jane.
It takes a million calls and three days of continuous practice after the approval to do his performance.
His new instrument is one that takes origin in the old times; a saxophone made out of wood. But the shape is different. It is one of the dragon as it unleashed his fire on her long hair then her face and whole body.
He stands before an audience, in a suit like the one he met her in. The Mastro behind him moved his hands and the show begins.
As he breathed the first breathe his mind goes back to the day he met her;
Leaving the restaurant where he was stood up in the city that was strange to him at that time. He walks aimlessly until he sees a bookshop and a beautiful girl standing near one of the shelves. Her long blonde hair covers some of her face, but he can see her eyes and small smile. She is reading "Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair". He had to know her.
It is his cue to stop and with the stop the memory is interrupted.
He opens his eyes and the crowd suddenly is luminous with figures that look like Jane's. One is petting the head of a small child, another is hugging her lover from behind as he closes his eyes in rememberence. The old man recalls Kilmet when she wrote "This should atone for the hours when I forget you." and the young man's tears fall.
The old man starts playing again and this time it is his last moment with her. He is in the crowd where hundreds agreed to stay in protest of the war funded by their royalty.
As the dragons show in the sky from afar panic sets in his heart "I don't want to die" he tells her. A glimpse of hope starts in her eyes and she says "go, my love". "I can't leave you!" He argues, shaking his head as her hands cup his face.
"Please. Go and live for me. I want you to live. My cause and destiny is to keep my place here. If there is doubt in your heart then yours are to leave". He feels a push of air around him coming from her hands. "No!" He yells, but the wind she summoned takes him away from her to the other end. As he is fighting to be released the dragon's fire reaches her hair. The wind drops him and he moves to go to her, but her smile stops him. She wants him to live so he must.
The performance ends. The old man walks home but without the presence of his Jane beside him.


-Ayat, An Old Man's Sonnet

-بابلو نيرودا، أتذكركِ مثلما كنتِ.
ترجمة مروان حداد