May 20, 2021
I hand-wrote this poem as I was translating it.
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And you, my beautiful friend
With the intoxicating smile?—
They call me ‘Mimi’
In the hours of delirium;
And they love my eyes
That point to the azure sky
And my voice….home-like,
….pure,
Spring gave me to May
And I was born
Then I was ordained,
Now I am a priest.
Now my name is….
And my light wings carry me
Away from the Convent
to the foreign lands.
I love to see this
Laughing Nile
chaste, azure,
and I bathe my eyelashes,
my heart,
my golden forehead.
*
1911
by May Ziadeh
A Lebanese-Palestian poet, private tutor and public speaker, essayist, novelist, editor, and translator.
*
This poem May might have written about her pet yellow bird, a canary who sang her songs which made her happy, and whom she might have let free thinking that was best for the bird to taste freedom…
Blush of Dawn 