Every Time I Kiss You

Every time I kiss you
After a long separation
I feel
I am putting a hurried love letter
In a red mailbox.

Nizar Qabbani

Nizar Qabbani was a Syrian diplomat, poet, writer, publisher, and one of the most revered contemporary poets in the Arab world. Renowned for his evocative and sensual poetry, he has written extensively on themes of love, eroticism, feminism, and Arab nationalism. His literary works have left a significant impact on Arabic literature and culture, making him an iconic figure whose legacy persists beyond his lifetime.

Nizar Qabbani

Clarification to My Poetry-Readers

Nizar Qabbani, Simple Poetry

My Love (Do Not Ask Me)

Nizar Qabbani, Simple Poetry

My Lover Asks Me

Nizar Qabbani, Simple Poetry

Love Compared

Nizar Qabbani, Simple Poetry

English

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When I Love You

When I love you
A new language springs up,
New cities, new countries discovered.
The hours breathe like puppies,
Wheat grows between the pages of books,
Birds fly from your eyes with tiding of honey,
Caravans ride from your breasts carrying Indian herbs,
The mangoes fall all around, the forests catch fire
And Nubian drums beat.

When I love you your breasts shake off their shame,
Turn into lightning and thunder, a sword, a sandy storm.
When I love you the Arab cities leap up and demonstrate
Against the ages of repression
And the ages
Of revenge against the laws of the tribe.
And I, when I love you,
March against ugliness,
Against the kings of salt,
Against the institutionalization of the desert.
And I shall continue to love you until the wo...

Nizar Qabbani

A Brief Love Letter

My darling, I have much to say
Where o precious one shall I begin ?
All that is in you is princely
O you who makes of my words through their meaning
Cocoons of silk
These are my songs and this is me
This short book contains us
Tomorrow when I return its pages
A lamp will lament
A bed will sing
Its letters from longing will turn green
Its commas be on the verge of flight
Do not say: why did this youth
Speak of me to the winding road and the stream
The almond tree and the tulip
So that the world escorts me wherever I go ?
Why did he sing these songs ?
Now there is no star
That is not perfumed with my fragrance
Tomorrow people will see me in his verse
A mouth the taste of wine, close-cropped hair
Ignore what people say
You will be gr...

Nizar Qabbani

My Love (Do Not Ask Me)

Do not ask me, the name of my love
I fear for you, from the fragrance of perfume
contained in a bottle, if you smashed it,
drowning you, in spilled scent

By God, if you even croaked a letter,
Lilacs would pile up on the paths

Do not look for it here in my chest
I have left it to run with the sunset

You can see it in the laughter of doves
In the flutter of butterflies
In the ocean, in the breathing of dales
and in the song of every nightingale
in the tears of winter, when winter cries
in the giving of a generous cloud

Do not ask about his lips...as elegant as the sunset
And his eyes, a shore of purity
And his waist, the sway of a branch
Charms...which no book has contained
Nor described by a literate's feather
And his ches...

Nizar Qabbani

Your Body Is My Map

raise me more love... raise me
my prettiest fits of madness
O daggers journey... in my flesh
and knifes plunge...
sink me further my lady...
the sea calls me
add to me more death ...
perhaps as death slays me... Im revived
your body is my map...
the world's map no longer concerns me...
I am the oldest capital of sadness...
and my wound a Pharaonic engraving
my pain.... extends like an oil patch
from Beirut... to China...
my pain... a caravan...dispatched
by the Caliphs of "AChaam"... to China...
in the seventh century of the "Birth"...
and lost in a dragons mouth...
bird of my heart... "naysani"
O sand of the sea, and forests of olives
O taste of snow, and taste of fire...
my heathen flavor, and insight
I feel scared of th...

Nizar Qabbani

In The Summer

In the summer
I stretch out on the shore
And think of you
Had I told the sea
What I felt for you,
It would have left its shores,
Its shells,
Its fish,
And followed me.

Nizar Qabbani

Oh, My Love

Oh, my love
If you were at the level of my madness,
You would cast away your jewelry,
Sell all your bracelets,
And sleep in my eyes.

Nizar Qabbani