The White Sheet...
(Tawṛiqt tacebḥant)
I awoke early in the morning,
And decided to write
A virgin page awaited me
What was I going to tell her?
I was afraid of committing myself to her
And that my intellect wouldn’t honour this meeting
Perhaps she wishes herself a tree
To lean against.
The white page remains frozen
The ink doesn’t want to blacken her.
How can I describe
A present that denies its past
How can I describe
A present denied in the past
By midday
I picked up my pencil again
I scrutinised the sheet of paper and the guitar
Was I going to write, to compose?
But the strings did not want to vibrate
To my hoped for melody
The walls reverberated
To the echo of my old songs
The white page remains frozen
The ink doesn’t want to blacken her.
How can you express yourself
When the sad pencil cries
And on the once melodious guitar
The strings vibrate with sad tears, crying
That evening I returned
To the same blank sheet awaiting me
I looked in vain
But the words abandoned me
I called to them with my guitar
But they spurned me
The night dwelt on me
A night announcing the long day before
The white page remains frozen
The ink doesn’t want to blacken her..
Why should I stay awake
When the words no longer speak to me
I struggle for that which carries me to sleep
The words go against my reason
But I believe I finally understand
Why the situation is confused
As soon as I want to write
My reason scours the countryside
Pulled by agonies
Feeling something which it missed
How to bear the pain of sick knowledge
One of the fingers of the hand?
The white page remains frozen
The ink doesn’t want to blacken her.
Deceived by time
The words have deserted their meaning
Time is deceptive
So let us wait for better days
I was going to go out, resigned
That reason continued to ignore me
But I turned again
To contemplate this virgin page
And I found arranged on it the words
Of all that I have just described
Resembling swallows
Perched on a wire
The white page is entwined
Blackened by the ink
When we do not know how to speak
The poem makes us remember
When we start to forget
The poem will awaken us.
Zixi
England
18.12.2010
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