Unfortunately, It Was Paradise

Death, wait while I pack my bag: a toothbrush, soap, a razor, cologne and clothes.

Is the weather mild there?

Does the weather in white eternity change?

Does it stay as it is in both autumn and winter?

Will one book be enough for me

to kill the no-time, or will I need a full library?

What language do they speak there,

common colloquial or classical Arabic?

Violet is the flower of frustration.

It reminds the dead of love’s untimely death.

So don’t lay violets on my grave.

I will say: Let me fall into the lap of the letter Nûn.

There my soul will be cleansed by Surat ‘Al-Rahman.

Death, wait for me beyond this earth, in your kingdom.

Wait, while beside your tent I say a few words to what’s left of my life.

I want to read all of Tarafah, so give me time.

I was not born to know that I will die, but to love the innermost of God’s shadows.

You said: What’s the use of my name without you?

Call me, for I created you when you gave me my name,

and in possessing it, you killed me.

Be worthy of the aroma of bread and summer flowers,

for your mother’s clay oven is still lit, and the greeting is as warm as a loaf.

Will I perform my role well in the last scene?

Had I already known the play or was it thrust upon me?

Is that me playing the role or did the victim change his testimony?

A book is not enough to say:

I find myself present in the fullness of absence.

Every time I seek my self I find others.

When I look for them, I see only my own strange self.

Distant words dwell in an earth that revolves in the sphere of a higher star.