M.

“وإنى يا صغيرى عرفت فتاة كانت تحاول أن تكتم دموع عينيها... فاجهش قلبها فى تنهيدة !”
― Aya Taher

“Isabel, as she herself grew older, became acquainted with revulsions, with disgusts; there were days when the world looked black and she asked herself with some sharpness what it was that she was pretending to live for.”
― Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady

“Omens"
Her eyelids were painted blue.
When she closed her eyes the sea
rolled in like ten thousand fiery chariots,

leaving behind silence above & below
a thousand years old. He stood beneath
a high arched window, gazing out

at fishing boats beyond the dikes, their nets
unfurled, their offshore gestures
a dance of living in bluish entourage.

He was only the court’s chief jester.
What he said & did made them laugh,
but lately what he sometimes thought he knew

could cost him his polished tongue & royal wig.
He was the masked fool unmasking the emperor.
Forget the revelation. Forget the briny sea.

He had seen the ravishing empress naked
in a forbidden pose. Her blue eye shadow.
Aquamarine shells crusted with wormy mud.

Anyway, if he said half of what was foretold,
the great one would become a weeping boy
slumped beneath the Pillars of Hercules.


Poetry Apr 2012, Vol. 200 Issue 1, p15”
― Yusef Komunyakaa

“I have seen much of human beings over a long period, and I have learnt how little good to expect from them.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Black Prince