from Beginnings of the Body, Ends of the Sea

[Eva Libre]

Beginnings of the Body, Ends of the Sea

by Adonis (Ali Ahmad Said)

Maybe
there is no love on earth
except the one we imagine
we will win, some day

Don’t stop
Go on with the dance, dear love, dear poetry
even if it were death

I imagine I am the sound of singing
rolling in waves among the bending reeds
I mix with light in the sun’s chamber
in the tents of the trees
I hide
among springs sometimes
and sometimes I descend the slope
of depths I cannot see

Ah love—a spring
falling aslant from the heights of fatigue

From nothing
where meaning
wanders in the wilds
love comes, and remains strange
wider than we had pictured, and higher

Is there a refuge from these embers?

  * * *

Translated from Arabic by Khaled Mattawa.

Painting: "The Awakening of Adonis" (1899), by John William Waterhouse (1849–1917)

[Eva Libre]

About the Painting:

In the legend, purple anemones grew for every drop of blood spilled on the ground, as Aphrodite tried to heal the wound in Adonis' side. The wound was caused by her jealous lover's boar, but it was already too late, the soul of Adonis had gone to the underworld.