The Epic of Sadness

Your love taught me to grieve and I have been in need, for centuries a woman to make me grieve for a woman, to cry upon her arms like a sparrow for a woman to gather my pieces like shards of broken crystal Your love has taught me, my lady, the worst habits it has taught me to read my coffee cups thousands of times a night to experiment with alchemy, to visit fortune tellers It has taught me to leave my house to comb the sidewalks and search your face in raindrops and in car lights and to peruse your clothes in the clothes of unknowns and to search for    your image even.... even.... even in the posters of advertisements your love has taught me to wander around, for hours searching for a gypsies hair that all gypsies women will envy searching for a face, for a voice which is all the faces and all the voices... Your love entered me... my lady into the cities of sadness and I before you, never entered the cities of sadness I did not know... that tears are the person that a person without sadness is only a shadow of a person... Your love taught me to behave like a boy to draw your face with chalk upon the wall upon the sails of fishermen's boats on the Church bells, on the crucifixes, your love taught me, how love, changes the map of time... Your love taught me, that when I love the earth stops revolving, Your love taught me things that were never accounted for So I read children's fairytales I entered the castles of Jennies and I dreamt that she would marry me the Sultan's daughter those eyes... clearer than the water of a lagoon those lips... more desirable than the flower of pomegranates and I dreamt that I would kidnap her like a knight and I dreamt that I would give her necklaces of pearl and coral Your love taught me, my lady, what is insanity it taught me... how life may pass without the Sultan's daughter arriving Your love taught me How to love you in all things in a bare winter tree, in dry yellow leaves in the rain, in a tempest, in the smallest cafe, we drank in, in the evenings... our black coffee Your love taught me... to seek refuge to seek refuge in hotels without names in churches without names... in cafes without names... Your love taught me... how the night swells the sadness of strangers It taught me... how to see Beirut as a    woman... a tyrant of temptation as a woman, wearing every evening the most beautiful clothing she possesses and sprinkling upon her breasts perfume for the fisherman, and the princes Your love taught me    how to cry without crying It taught me how sadness sleeps Like a boy with his feet cut off in the streets of the Rouche and the Hamra Your love taught me to grieve and I have been needing, for centuries a woman to make me grieve for a woman, to cry upon her arms like a sparrow for a woman to gather my pieces like shards of broken crystal