For us Remains the Sea
(Translated by:
Abdulwaḥid Lu’lu’a)
We stood by the sea, under the midday sun, two excited children,
My soul swimming across your meadows,
In a river of two generous eyes.
My heart running, after a question
Of buds, carrying a pasture aroma on your lips.
Your question has the sweetness of the northern wind,
The splendour of a song poured by longing violins,
Hidden in your hands.
Your question is the colour of the sky
Over ponds and vineyards.
You asked if the sea alters its colours,
Do its waves change colours?
Do its shores alter?
You ask and your eyes were as wide as visions.
Your face, a star gone far,
Lost ships that could not find a haven.
You ask and your eyelashes were a child’s surprise,
A cornstalk quiver, a modulating field.
Your hands were two sails,
Dropping on two boats,
Wandering behind range and visions.
I said: Yes, my sweetheart.
The sea alters its colours.
Green ships sail across it.
Blond towns emerge from it.
It sometimes drinks the sunset blood.
It sometimes assumes the colour of space,
And gathers its blueness, my love,
And dreams, gazing with azure eyes,
Sky coloured,
To the endless, assuming the colour of light
In the morning and turns all its chandeliers in the evening.
You asked about the sea: Does it change colours?
Do its waves alter in colours?
Do its shores alter?
Yes, my love.
The sea that beats my soul valleys,
And departs across heavens of colour and sun,
Across sunset fields.
The lunar dusk bathes in its waves, and wets its hair,
Casting to it a sky and an idea.
Yes, my love, yet, and colours its gulfs.
Yes, and alters colours,
Drinks the yellowness of my doubt and suspicion,
Becomes blue, like my tune colour,
And sail, in its waves’ azure, my songs and ships.
It becomes white, its wave turns a jasmine.
It becomes green, like the sad eyes green,
Like the aquamarine of Nahawand river,
In the bottom of my grief.
You asked about the sea: Does it change colours?
Your eyes were spacious seas,
Of lost limits and shores.
Yes, my love, it alters colours,
And takes the tint of ashes.
It has a taste of all sleepless nights.
Grey are all its fishes, and ash colour
Are its pearls, sponge, octopus, and ash colour
Are its towns of drowned domes,
And ash colour is the forehead
Of a floating drowned, the salt cushioned its waves,
In a swoon, swallowing water and salt,
With thorns and ashes on his lips.
My sea, and yours, is a sea of ashes,
The heart yearning
Has cruelty that kisses the wound, spreads a soft pillow.
My sea and yours wrangled, with the grey, drowned body,
Sent its cruel wave to smite him,
The sea fairies to carry him,
To the forgetful russet sands,
To lie unconscious on the shore.
The sea of ashes
Sprinkles on his unconsciousness.
The drowned youth is courted, in the cheeks, by a wave of love,
Washing his forehead, and pouring
On him love, salt, and foam.
Once it covers the body,
And once it returns, recording,
And leaving him to eternal daze.
O you who asked me:
Does my sea, and yours, alter colours?
And like clouds, colours, and paints its banks
In oil or coal?
My love, in my childhood, I had a grandfather,
Tall, like the hair plaits of a leafy spring.
My grandfather had a depth,
A shade, a distance.
He had violence, like an autumn storm.
He had a space in unlimited, mysterious seas.
My grandfather was strong, like a fearful sea wave.
One day, fire flames ran into our house,
Starting by chewing the door, burning the tender drapes.
The flames ran in circles,
Roaring in our hope balconies, laughing at our horror,
Threatening to expand, running in our residential area,
Warning to consume cheeks,
Lips and plaits,
To assassinate even granary youth.
My grandfather rushed like a sea wave,
Sending a shout of horror and fear,
Coming down like a blizzard, swearing and cursing.
His curses were rain and compassion.
His savagery, a tuned verse of poetry,
A prayer whisper, a dawn star,
A perfume-boat.
The stretch of swearing, on his lips, is a coloured brook.
My grandfather extinguished the fire.
And saved my eyelashes and hair.
My love, and my grandfather was a sea!
He alters his colours. His eyelids turn black and green.
He changes his waves, expands, forms pearls.
He flows in springs, anchors on shores,
Creates an ebb, causes a flow.
He scatters blond islands across the blue gulf.
His cursing buckets were balm jars,
Breaking the fire bracelets, by a subtle forearm and wrist.
The force of my sea waves, and yours, became hard palms and chest,
To carry the grey drowned body, cover it with a rain of kisses and love,
And place it on the banks of peace,
Flutter of a pigeon wing,
To give it a new lifetime,
Plant dreams in the swoon,
And memory cornstalks, a cooling cloud.
About colour and sea, you ask me, my love?
When you are my sail,
My sea colours,
The daze of the dream in my eyes.
You are my road fog,
You are my sails,
And you are my wave apex,
My sorrow rose, my pallor fragrance.
About the colour, and sea, you ask me, my love?
When you are my seas,
My choral and shell.
Your face is my home,
So, take my boat on a wrapped and hidden wave of yearning,
To a vague impossible shore,
With no planes or uplands,
To a dusk of lunar orbit, and deep nadir,
With no colour at midday,
No part in thickness,
No horror, no peace.
There, we shall be lost,
Eat the winter warmth, and pluck spring snow,
And yarn the frost wool.
There, there is no length in our dream-shade, no shortness,
No record of destiny,
Nothing that sight could climb,
Except a song-wave, coming down the moon mountains.
We laugh, weep, and your eyes reflect the sea colour.
And for us remain the colour,
The sea,
And the expected eternity.
(5-6-1974)
(The Sea Alters its Colours, 1974, pp. 365-373)