BE OF HATE 

A LITTLE MORE CAREFUL 

THAN ANYTHING 

Poem for Today - Saturday - September 20, 2014

WHEN I KILLED MY LOVE

I hated you, till there was nothing

but my terrible hate to converse with.

Into it I poured tomorrow's blood

and drowned my present.

I fed it the fire of curses, revolution and revenge,

inflicted my cries of hatred upon it in my dark song,

sustained it with the sleep of the dead

and drew a curtain of ghosts and gloom around it.

I despised your name,

its shadows and echoes.

I loathed its colour and tune,

rhythm and form

and the rough memories

which fell, were consumed

and dwelt in eternity all in a moment:

and I was resurrected as a new poem

which says that the past is only a word.

Victory was mine as you fell,

a statue over a cliff.

I came to bury the pieces under the grief of the cypress.

Hungrily my spade split the earth,

and touched

a cold and frightful foot.

I proudly dragged to the light

—Whose corpse? the remains of regret ...

The night was a mirror where I beheld my hatred

and my dead past, but not the centre of my being.

I knew then,

having killed you in my cup and night

and borne my murdered slowly to the grave—

knew, by the lugubrious hue of my face

that I had only killed myself.

(May 12,1952)

© Nazik al-Mala’ika (1923-2007)

pages 78-79 in When

the Words Burn,

An Anthology of

Modern Arabic Poetry: 1945-1987,

translated by John Mikhail Asfour