What is life but a dream
What is life but a dream that merely passed through us? My hours and my days have slipped away like visions in sleep. Did I truly live? Doubt nearly overcomes me, Or was all that I lived no more than tangled dreams? In little more than the closing of an eye and its opening, The child has become an old man with silver upon his head. Weakness now draws close beside my every step, If I can still walk at all, the weight of years compels me to sit. My words betrayed the covenant they once had with me when I called upon them, My pages and my pens, too, abandoned their loyalty. My sight has failed me, and my hearing—alas for them, And my body bends beneath its burdens, sicknesses, and pain. Had I not possessed certainty in my Lord, who has no equal, I would have believed my life to be nothing but illusions.
Issam al-Attar
