NIZAR QABBANI: “ATTEMPT TO ASSASSINATE A LOVE AFFAIR”

We made a plan,

before we cut the thread:

We would remain friends,

no more than friends.

We were excited.

We agreed.

We said it again:

Let us remain wise.

We charted the course

of our own oblivion.

We conspired to kill the sky.

We met in secret.

***

And then, suddenly,

we met in summer.

We broke everything.

We destroyed it all

in a matter of moments,

just as we had planned.

We set siege to our layouts.

Smoke filled up the air.

We cried we apologized.

We drowned we floated

like fish lying trembling

at the bottom of a pond.

***

We clung to each other

like thread to a needle.

We forgot we were friends,

no more than friends.

We lay down our swords

upon the earth.

We sacrificed we slaughtered.

We grew hardened with longing.

We made love,

again and again.

We howled like beasts.

We bled like prey.

We felt ashamed.

We rained we raged.

We sinned.

We ran.

***

In the prairies of love,

you and I became free.

We became two horses

galloping in the sun.

We entered the sun

and opened her body.

We wounded and were wounded.

We knew sex in the sweetest moments

and in the harshest moments too.

We pressed our bodies together.

We peeled them apart.

We exchanged our skins.

We talked a little

then fell silent.

***

We leapt across History.

We saw millions signs:

from the kings of the Umayyads

to the Mamluk Ages

to the dances of dervishes.

We learned of Abu Zayd Hillali.

and of Layla and Majnun.

We sang in our mother tongue.

We invented a new language.

We spoke in broken sentences

devoid of any meaning.

We cast them all aside.

We wore masks of wax

and debated with the wise.

We were baptized in the waters

of sex and of love.

We were purified

and returned home, innocent.

***

And we forgot to notice

when the summer came again.

And we forgot the things we said

in the days of winter.

***

And we became friends,

no more than friends.

Translated from Arabic by Paul Weinfield, © 2017