ng For my Beloved to Descend 1 I have seen you standing At the top of the stair. A gold crown is upon your forehead And a mysterious silver mantle is upon Your icy shoulders. The stair is as high as heaven And as deep as hell. I stand at the lowest foot of lowness bottom As an armless rebel having nothing But the stones of delight, As an unknown poet, As a foolish philosopher, As a blind coachman. I wait for you To open your door of insults That is full of bones and crippled whips. Or to open the door of your mantle So that your royal fresh body will appear To capture my great sorrows, my obsessions and madness That I had since Gilgamesh’s and Enkido’s time, Since Enkido’s and Sargon’s time, Since Sargon’s and Deek Aljen’s time Since Deek Aljen’s time And the time I put on Jinn’s clothes. 2 Now, the picture becomes very clear. I get your greatest secret. I stand to take care of your shadow As a clown delighted in silliness of his audience As a blind man delighted in the people’s complaint Against the sun’s fire. As a night lost its dawn in a lowered bar. Now, all I hope from you is To descend from your false height To the foot of my daily lowness So that to discover love An ember put on the lips or between the eyes. And to discover your cold loneliness When you see thousands of my attendants of Jinn. To recognize your utter ignorance When my magical letters And my dot colored with violence Will jump before your astonished eyes. 3 My great myth, Your scene is truly sad. The stair has one thousand stairs You stand on its cloud And I in its black well. Please, try to shorten the distance By the delight of your height. Please, try to kill the distance By a flash of your body’s lower part. And remember when you set Your body’s seven continents on fire That there is no mirror can know Your seven languages Except the mirror of my nakedness. And no meaning for my crazy deprivation will exist Unless you put my head on the spear, And bear it to the sun’s four directions In your black coach pulled by the dictators’ horses. ****** 1. Gilgamesh is the hero of the famous Iraqi epic “Gilgamesh’s epic”, in which Gilgamesh searches hard for the secret of immortality. After many travels, he finds the seed of immortality but the snake soon steal it.. * Sargon: The great Assyrian King (from 705 to 721 B.C.) ruled a large kingdom in Iraq. * Deek Aljen: The noted Arabic poet who loved his sweetheart deeply. After killing her in a moment of doubtfulness, he spent his final years writing great laments about her.