[POEM] Twenty-Eight Pieces of Sugar By Ahmed AlManei (Translated)
Twenty-eight pieces of sugar
and my soul, my heart, my lifetime, and more.
For your birthday, dreams awaken and drift to sleep,
while candlelight flickers softly, then grows dim.
What are you, if not a rare enchantment
a union of wakefulness and dream beyond all explanation?
A nature carrying a handful of eternity,
with fragrance, with light, and things I cannot name.
For your sake, I canceled all the feasts of my year;
Within your feast, I sacrifice and break my fast.
OH, my intoxication from loving you too deeply
and you know even a little of you is enough to intoxicate.
Every day of your life passes sweeter than the last,
O little girl who, when she grows older, grows younger still.
Like clouds clasping the hand of the wind,
moving and moving and moving, until they rain.
How bewildered the verses become before you:
One line loses itself, another breaks apart.
I compare your beauty to every noble beauty,
yet both my words and all beauty fall short of you.
I came to your celebration with nothing in my hands
except a perfumed card to offer you.
Upon it I drew a flower and a sky,
a distant cottage and a stream from Paradise.
And a verse of poetry through which I try to speak of you
Though it never truly can.
Twenty-eight pieces of sugar
and my soul, my heart, my lifetime, and more.
Because I love you:
My soul is the ink,
My heart is the pen,
and my life, the notebook.