The following are translations of poems from Sama Essa’s elegiac collection: A Love Song for Laila Fakhru (Beirut 2012):
(16)
The twittering sparrows
Are but a mystical departure
The tree discards its crop on the earth
Water yearns for death
On its descending course to abyss.
(17)
Are you opening the door?
I see you not
As if the fruit of love falls from the sky
And with it falls your beauty
To be buried in the earth.
(18)
When you come into the light
With your angel-like smile
And young widow-like cry
My soul takes me to you
For I see your tear
Carving a path to love
Carving a path to death.
But I won’t see you again
I won’t see your pale sad face
The face that tells the news of
Your death
My death.
(19)
That desert tree was but your bones
She drank your blood
And the birds carried it to distant
Realms.
(20)
The sky is a blue mother
Yearning for her tender babes,
Pebbles strewn in deserted valleys
Where whirling dervishes packed their bags
And travelled.
(21)
I shall carry a big pain in my heart
But hush up
To be but sweet water to you.
O lovely tree
You draw your branches close
Like a mother cuddling her babes.
I’ll carry a big pain in my heart
But hush up.
(22)
Even night turns savage
Its strange mystical creatures vanish
In a bloody pool
Like yellow dry olive trees…
Graves
Turn to travelers
The wind fleetingly blows.
Perhaps on hills
There rises a bitter childhood
Like an absence driven by the fire
To the heart.
(23)
A mourning boat carries lovers
A silent man consorts with seagulls
Wandering small clouds light ancient planets
Just as the glory of God
Brightens the distant dark.
But …
Who are these travellers to the countless stars?
The moon has left her old lovers
But your beauty still glitters
Like a flower blooming
In an eternal autumn.
(24)
Open the door
This dawn
The forest-baby
Left you a love song
A rose and a bottle of milk
And then departed.
(25)
When love awakes you again
You’ll be resurrected,
Like a flower
Wet with tears.
Only the autumn’s migrating bird
And the distant southern wind
Know the way to you.
In your heart’s oyster
Dwells the souls of your dead dears.
(26)
Shepherds with camels
Autumn’s rain
The distant cry of a woman in a cave
Bones of martyrs
Their eyes open as if adored by lightning
As if shrouded in ashes
Their guns thrown on stones
Tainted by blood
Their bodies, calm tranquil
Small memories on grass
These, Laila, are the last love letters for you.
