If you could see your own face
the way I do
every mirror would trap you.
Now a nightingale
you would soon see:
you are also the rose.
Your days would be filled up!
your nights,
spent in your own arms.
So why are we divided?
Why did He give you such beauty
and me the eyes to see it?
You look in the mirror and
think you’re not enough…
but for me
you are almost too much.
My toes can’t reach the floor
when you walk by –
the sky is not high enough
to describe how I soar!
Yet you say,
“I am too fat, too dark,
too ugly, not good enough.”
and little by little, I die.
You are stabbing us both
with that disapproving blade!
Why can’t lover and beloved
occupy the same space?
Such beauty –
it nearly burns my soul! –
yet fails to admire itself:
Nicki, Angela, Zhinous,
Fariba, Nini, Leyla, Samira,
Mahtab, Nasim, Sandra…
The list has no end
of angels who walk this Earth
but cannot see.
If only I could loan you
my eyes
for one moment!
If seer and seen
could put off
their cloak of separation
for a while…
But then,
if not for that distance,
what power would move
this poet’s pen?
the way I do
every mirror would trap you.
Now a nightingale
you would soon see:
you are also the rose.
Your days would be filled up!
your nights,
spent in your own arms.
So why are we divided?
Why did He give you such beauty
and me the eyes to see it?
You look in the mirror and
think you’re not enough…
but for me
you are almost too much.
My toes can’t reach the floor
when you walk by –
the sky is not high enough
to describe how I soar!
Yet you say,
“I am too fat, too dark,
too ugly, not good enough.”
and little by little, I die.
You are stabbing us both
with that disapproving blade!
Why can’t lover and beloved
occupy the same space?
Such beauty –
it nearly burns my soul! –
yet fails to admire itself:
Nicki, Angela, Zhinous,
Fariba, Nini, Leyla, Samira,
Mahtab, Nasim, Sandra…
The list has no end
of angels who walk this Earth
but cannot see.
If only I could loan you
my eyes
for one moment!
If seer and seen
could put off
their cloak of separation
for a while…
But then,
if not for that distance,
what power would move
this poet’s pen?