An Attempt at Madness

 Adeeb Kamal Ad-Deen

 

 

   1

The moon is at the door

Hung by its feet.

   2

 Everybody became self-sufficient

As a cut string.

   3

Friends beget hither and thither

Lies and trifles.

   4

The meaning is imprisoned within itself

None can redeem it

Nor even I.

   5

Those who died

Had written well their destroyed poems.

   6

Yesterday I died.

In the morning I, as usual, woke up.

   7

Hunger is a letter.

All you need is to envelop  it

And send to you.

Sorry

To me.

   8

The woman died: so did the dream,

The sense and the dawn.

Her death was an occasion for forty other  disasters.

   9

Madness is beautiful

Because it is my post box full of birds

And my future full of darkness.

   10

My letters have protested

Against the grief mountains in themselves.

So I crushed them with a hand of steel

With patience and horror.

   11

The poet and the ruler died.

The philosopher died

And the historian died.

When the fruit seller died

The people, then, protested.

 

 12

My only friend who survived

Sent me a letter, full of serpents and owls.

It filled my home with horror.

   13

When I read my poems yesterday

In a public celebration

A large mass of audience was there

I had never dreamt of.

Over there, there was none

But my heart,

My table

And my blood.

   14

Your love is poetry of light

And you, my sweetheart, are

A she- prophet of darkness.

   15

When I wrote your name, I became embarrassed.

I madly loved its letters.

I feared that people would behold them.

Nay, I feared that I would behold them myself.

   16

Where are you?

Bring back to my blood Africa’s drums,

Asia’s follies

And the phantoms of the lower world.

   17

Your love has become a poem.

All the crazy people of the Earth

Are fond of it.

How wonderful!

   18

Your love has led my poetry

To the essence of letters and dots.

It has led me to superiority

To superiority madness.

   19

Th…

The moon is at the door.

It has lifted one foot!

 

( TM)

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