Light is more important than the lantern, The poem more important than the notebook.
We need an angry generation, A generation to plow the horizons.
Some are like the Moon, good looking, but only when they’re away from you.
Don’t lose a woman who has seen your flaws and still loves you.
Our enemies did not cross our borders They crept through our weaknesses like ants.
And I fear that my place gets taken by some other one, very lucky and not too shy, who flirts with your eyes while I’m the one who’s crazy about them.
Days will pass, and you’ll abandon things you were addicted to, and leave someone, and cancel a dream, and finally, accept a reality.
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.
We are a thick skinned people with emtpy souls. We spend our days playing dice, chess, or sleeping – and we say we are the best people that ever came to mankind?
Life doesn’t stop after losing someone, but it goes on without them differently.
Our shouting is louder than our actions, Our swords are taller than us, This is our tragedy. In short We wear the cape of civilisation But our souls live in the stone age.
When a man is in love how can he use old words? Should a woman desiring her lover lie down with grammarians and linguists? I said nothing to the woman I loved but gathered love’s adjectives into a suitcase and fled from all languages.
Dive into the sea, or stay away.
We praise like frogs, Swear like frogs, Turn midgets into heroes, and heroes into scum: We never stop and think.
Your love taught me to grieve and I have been needing, for centuries a woman to make me grieve for a woman, to cry upon her arms like a sparrow for a woman to gather my pieces like shards of broken crystal.
It’s painful to listen to the barking of dogs.
What we feel is beyond words. We should be ashamed of our poems.
The word is a bouncing ball The ruler throws from his balcony. The word has been a shot of morphine. Rulers calm their people with speeches.
O Sultan, my master, if my clothes are ripped and torn it is because your dogs with claws are allowed to tear me.
We killed you and it was not new for us, we killed the companions of the Prophet and the friends of God. O how many Messengers did we slay? O how many imams? We killed you and you prayed the night prayer, as all of our days are struggle – and all of our days are Karbala.