Hiba.

I’ve a fear of pure poetry sometimes, / the immaculate peace of it,

“Like a pearl diver who descends to the bottom of the sea, not to excavate the bottom and bring it to light but to pry loose the rich and the strange, the pearls and the coral in the depths, and to carry them to the surface, this thinking delves into the depths of the past – but not in order to resuscitate it the way it was and to contribute to the renewal of extinct ages. What guides this thinking is the conviction that although the living is subject to the ruin of time, the process of decay is at the same time a process of crystallization, that in the depths of the sea, into which sinks and is dissolved what once was alive, some things “suffer a sea-change” and survive in new crystallized forms and shapes that remain immune to the elements, as though they waited only for the pearl diver who one day will come down to them and bring them up into the world of the living – as “thought fragments,” as something “rich and strange,” and perhaps even as everlasting.”

On this blue day, you stand for a long time on a high mountain and stare at clouds merging together, covering land and sea. You think you are higher than yourself, like a bird existing only in a metaphor. The metaphor entices you to break away from it and look at the empty sky, like a blue desert without a mirage to be seen. Then the metaphor calls you back to its source and you cannot find a way through the clouds. On this blue night, you see the mountains looking at the stars and the stars looking at the mountains. You think they can see you, so you thank them for their affable company. You are reluctant to emerge from the metaphor in case you fall into the well of loneliness.

أصِلُ إلى حقولِ الذاكرة وقصورها، حيث توجد كنوز من الصور لا تُحصى ولا تُعَدّ، وقد جاءت بها مدركات الحواسّ المتعددة الأشكال، فيها أودعت جميع الصور التي صوّرناها أيضًا إمّا بالزيادة أو بالنقصان أو بأي شكل من أشكال التحوير لما بلغته حواسّنا، وكلّ ما أودع وادخِّر هناك، مالم يغمرهُ النسيان ويدفنه.

“God, who created it with such magnificence, it is thee I invoke: show me a man who is good… But at the same time increase my strength tenfold; for at the sight of such a monster, I may die of astonishment: men have died of less.”

“May my silences become more accurate. ~ Words wear me away.”

When life itself seems lunatic, who knows where madness lies? Perhaps to be too practical is madness. To surrender dreams — this may be madness. Too much sanity may be madness — and maddest of all: to see life as it is, and not as it should be!