Poetry by Mohsen bin Mitrak
Night drew down its robe and darkness held sway,
and longing flashed its lightning and its thunder groaned.
Every memory pounds between the ribs,
its waves yield nothing but tightness and the sound of sighing.
Estrangement came between me and sleep,
until my side turned away from the edge of its resting place.
I endure, yet I am not as I wish to be —
his phantom passed unchallenged and absence kept its promise.
I hate to return and grow accustomed, while feelings run wild,
and I hate the heart if it yearns or calls out.
Would that it had no stirring, or that its reins had obeyed me —
then what stirs the memory would not have shaken its firm peg.
Longing revives the plower of deep wounds,
and poetry is the support of every sorrowing soul that falls.
The creator soars in thought beyond the clouds' limits
when he mounts the saddle of his dimensions and attains his joy.
His gaze reaches the stars, his step goes forward,
and no matter how weary his back grows, his effort does not wane.
I write it when the fortress of meanings crumbles,
and I leave it when the fool meddles with it and criticises it.
Between the silence of the forbearing and the excess of words,
the rare thinker feels a stranger in his own land!
If he speaks, he enters the circle of accusation;
if he stays silent, those who were born with his own generation covet him!
He hates criticism and hates revenge,
and hates the one whose imagination is as flat as the palm of his hand.