Yahia Lababidi and Sheema Kalbasi

 
I have not found the key to myself

the one that will get the high gates

to swing wide open and the lights

to come on all at once

I have not found an ethos,

one that does not seek to impose

and expect but is alert and able

to breathe in all at once

When not denied entrance entirely

I fumble in the dark and stumble

blindly, run into doors and walls,

groping and hoping

A place where everything

does not hoard a secret and hope

is not false reaching, grief neither

furtive nor triumphing

I knock my head against false ceilings

and trip on traps I forgot to dismantle,

then start at the sight of my reflection

bumping into my selves.

Yahia Lababidi is the author of Signposts to Elsewhere [1] and the only contemporary Arab author in encyclopedia of World's Great Aphorists. In her testimonial Naomi Shihab Nye writes: “Signposts to Elsewhere is a succulent, stunning collection of images and thoughts more well-lit than the old swinging torches of the lamplighters. I find myself pausing everywhere among these wisdoms, wondering why the world stumbles and staggers through such a dark and greedy time when there are people alive with such keen, caring insight. If Yahia Lababidi were in charge of a country, I would want to live there.” Lababidi’s latest can be ordered here [2].

Sheema Kalbasi is the translator and editor of Seven Valleys of Love, a bilingual anthology of women poets from Middle-Age Persia to present day Iran. Visit howitgoesnaked.blogspot.com [3]