Let me be the bewildered self, the balloon of me in the wind, in vertigo, shaking, the air too thin. If you are not a rain, my love––but how sudden when you come––be a tree. I see you, sky, the sudden heat. If you are not my bewildered self–– o friend, the tether thinning, the weight of me already not enough. If my soul dismounts to walk beside me––friend, the blood of gums now on my tongue, my teeth, before you. On the verge of dawn, at the sight of siege, the alarms, the morning dove––o tree, if my soul in dread of waking against the fuzzed tongue of night should sleep instead, restore my sorrow back to this bewildered self that I may be with you again on the verge of a dawn about to rain.
***
Written in conversation with Mahmoud Darwish’s A State of Siege.
