Palestine
Oasis
Fadwa Touqan
Enough for Me
I Won't Sell His Love
In The Ocean
No Separation
The Rock
I Won't Sell His Love
What chance
Sweet dreamlike chance
Joined us here in this distant land
Here two strange souls we
Where united by the Muse
Who carried us away
Our souls becoming a song
Floating on a Mozart air
In its precious world
You said: How deep your eyes
How sweet you are
You said it with hushed, echoing desire
For we were not alone
And in your eyes an invitation
And in my depths intoxication
What intoxication
I am a woman so forgive my heart its vanity
When your murmur caresses it: how deep your eyes
How sweet you are
O poet, in my country, my beloved country
I have a sweetheart waiting
He is my countryman I won't squander
His heart
He is my countryman I won't sell
His love
For the world's treasures
For the shining stars for the moon
Yet intoxication grips my heart
As in your eyes drift love's shadows or invitation glimmers
I am a woman so forgive my heart its vanity
When your murmur caresses it: How deep your eyes
How sweet you are.
The Rock
A black rock is fastened upon my
heart
with oppressive chains of fate and time.
Look how it grinds my fruit and flowers;
throughout my days it has crushed my life and existence.
Leave me alone, I will not overcome this rock.
The chains that constrict me will never be broken.
I will stay alone in my isolation,
as long as fate is my sentinel.
Leave me as I am, no light, no tomorrow,
no hope, no escape from the black rock.
Forgetting myself I tried to remove the rock;
into the heart of life itself I penetrated;
I went in all directions;
I sang, took pleasure at the springs of youth;
I madly drank till I was intoxicated;
I madly drank till I was intoxicated;
In the world of pleasure how often did I
seem to thwart my pain and my wretchedness;
I danced like a stubbornbirds, and roared.
But in the depth of wretchedness,
trembling, my spirit kept striking
like thunder in the unknown:
"You will never escape : I am here."
The ghost of the black rock rises
again with its unclean sight.
in vain I try to remove it,
In vain I try to escape.
I wandered in the land of wretchedness
seeking the spirit of consolation
from other prisoners of fate.
I passed among the crowds,
among calamities and tears,
where whips swept down on the human herd;
on naked backs and tired necks,
where slaves are crushed
and drowned in blood and tears.
In wretchedness I searched for consolation.
There was no escape from the black rock.
It was born with me like a curse,
a dumb distress with shadows that
follow in all the steps of my life.
With force it stood on my chest;
this rock which I will never defeat;
my chains of captivity will never be broken.
My spirit will remain confined;
and I will renew my struggle
against the pain of time and fate.
Alone! the black rock grinds and there is no escape.
No
Separation
Where shall you and I flee one another
When together we live in a prison of love?
Hand in hand we voluntarily founded our prison
on solid land; with passion we built its walls
of bricks of our wishes and future plans;
of a thousand perfumes and colors;
of memories , emotions, tears and happy laughter;
of warm feelings, countless words and designs;
of triumphs that made us drunk together;
of defeat that choked us with bitterness;
of the one opinion on which we coincide;
of a thousand dewy and beautiful dreams;
of the sweet and eternal fire,
and of other unforgettable things we shared.
Where shall you and I flee one another
when together we live in a prison of love
from which we strive to escape
till we collapse almost powerless?
We remain face to face , gasping
for breath because of our love;
in our cheeks we feel dark fire.
Laying down arms, we then embrace;
in love and pleasure we melt and vanish.
How shall we run anyway? And where
to?
Trying to flee one another we escape to each other.
In vain we look for freedom and separation.
In The Ocean
All the faces around us vanished
that evening, and all other things
were absent, but the blue light
and the invitation in the bright blue of your eyes
where my heart is a sailing ship
drawn by the unchanging ocean
in the blue light of your eyes;
we both were drawn by the waves
of a limitless ocean ever at high tides
where the waves tell a short tale
of life, death, and the everlasting
all epitomized in one glance,
so that the land drowns in the rush
of rainy storms and of the tides.
My garden woke that evening;
wind fingers broke the fences;
grass, fruit and flowers were
shaken by the dance of rain and wind;
all the faces around us vanished
that evening and all other things
were absent, but the bright blue
and the invitation in your eyes
by which my heart was drawn
like a ship ever yearning for the ocean.
Enough
for Me
Enough for me to die on her earth
be buried in her
to melt and vanish into her soil
then sprout forth as a flower
played with by a child from my country.
Enough for me to remain
in my country's embrace
to be in her close as a handful of dust
a sprig of grass
a flower.
Last updated 1 January 2000 Written and
Designed By Rafic Adnan El-saleh
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