The moon has made its way into Aquarius, which was the sign May Ziadeh was born (who you have seen make a presence in the posts in the recent weeks; I let people and things be where they find themselves within my heart.) She was born on February 11, 1886, a hundred years before my birthday on February 19, 1986, which makes us on the Aquarius-Pisces cusp, me in Pisces.
Her poems enfold me as I’ve read and translated many of them since I’d found Fleurs de Reve, (Dream Flowers) this month of May. I had also found it the natural thing to draw with my pen around her poems after I’d handwritten them and had read yesterday that Kahlil had made ink drawings on the letters he’d send off to her.
I am learning about translating writings and poems, and a little French at the same time.
It was wonderful to see that she had published her first book in 1911, the one I am currently reading that is poetry, and I published my first book (that I haven’t mentioned in recent years) which was short stories a hundred years later in 2011; I had stopped its print sometime afterwards during a harsh period of self-criticism, but I have the file, and we were both 25 years old at the time and published the books under pen names.
As for our second books, mine was poetry, Moonflower (and since the first had not continued printing I introduce this book as my first and it is full length in the number of pages). Her second book was considered a biography (The Desert Researcher; I translate the title into English (or maybe biographical novel about her colleague), and both books were published around the same number of years after the first, mine was seven; hers nine. Synchronicities can be invigorating and awaken the heart and also bring with them comfort and calm.
Here’s an excerpt of a poem of hers I’d written down in my English translation and found myself drawing around it just afterwards, like many of the others:
by May Ziadeh
Oh my golden dreams! Oh my wild dreams!
Where do you run, so eager and light?Why do you drag me into these high places, where love is life, where passions live, where the pure breath of angels caresses my heart, where Eros sojourns the heavenly phalanges,
where every broken heart bears a palm, a martyr, where one loves so sweet without suffering…?
In the distance, I see waters, quivering springs whose dying sobs in trembling waterfalls…
Passing through the gardens invaded with freshness
Where the shadow sways and the flower throbs…
*
May you be enwrapped and nourished, your heart and any chips together; may you find yourself held and embraced as your whole self.
—Jade
Blush of Dawn 