Download PDF Here
14th Anniversary Edition, Live Encounters Poetry & Writing Volume Seven Nov-Dec 2023.
I mentioned you, poems by Zuhair Abu Shayeb.
I mentioned you
I mentioned you while the sky is close to you and me
I can almost touch your moonlit face as it shines from all sides
I see no light except you
I do not crave rain with the scent of dust that lends me a body
I have my old body
I have his first bottle of wine that I hid for you
I do not need except everything of you
So that I can only be your place
When I return from my exile without a poem
And my heart knocks the door
And it almost falls into the void
You will open the door
You will ask the heart: What is your name? Whose heart are you?
Confess so that you do not return to emptiness
You will send light to me
You will teach my fingers the correct playing
You will be born and be born and be born for no reason
Like a secret butterfly
That came from the holy flame
To return to the flame.
Tell the rose to bloom
Tell the rose to bloom in darkness
And come close to it to smell the scent of God
As the knowledgeable Sufi approaches the door of the Absolute
Tell your secret butterfly
To swim like a wave in the sea
And to paint her image with blue flame
Tell the fire trapped at the bottom of the valley of death:
The clay remains sick and heartless
Until it is burned!
Tell the wine dripping from your lips:
Ripen!
Tell the lost river here:
I threw myself into you
To know myself.
There is no tomorrow
There is no tomorrow that will come and take us
We are stuck in a void with no past and no future
But we did not know where
Do we exist
Or we are ancient people filling memories?
And who are we?
The nomadic Bedouins of Heaven
Fighting over the veins of water?
The night shadow over the earth?
Or our fatherless lost orphaned children?
Who are we?
Who are our ghosts?
What is this land that is us?
What is this void?
There, in the distant light
The coming from our dreams will know
That the visions are us
That those who are awake in our dreams are us, not our darkness
As for those here here
In all this night
In the clay that they call night
Are not us
Not us
Who are they to be us?
Come, night
So, when we look for each other
He completely forgets how he came
And where did he lose himself, and when
And how much he will die while walking inside himself!
© Zuhair Abu Shayeb
Zuhair Abu Shayeb (1958) is a Palestinian poet and writer. He obtained a BA in Arabic Language and Literature from Yarmouk University in 1982. He was a member of the administrative board of the Association of Jordanian writers for several sessions, and a member of the Association and the General Union of Arab Writers. In 2012, he received Mahmoud Darwish Award for Creativity. Among his poetry collections: The Geography of Winds and Questions 1986, The Book of Statuses and Maqamat 1987, The Biography of the Grass 1997. In addition to a play entitled: Blind White (1987)