TAGHRID BOU MERHI

 

 

On The Edge Of The Poem

 

What wall is this

that slips from my side

whenever I touch my shadow?

 

What prophecy scratches my throat

when I scream

from a silence growing on the gums of poems?

 

I did not write—

I was merely moving an illusion

to open a door to emptiness between my hands.

 

Every poem I wrap around my waist bites me—

like the ecstasy of the first time

I kissed the mouth of metaphor… in forgetfulness!

 

Every letter dripping from the cracks of meaning

betrays me…

drops me to the knees of confusion.

 

What meaning guards the borders of fire

when the flame becomes a trembling palm

in the lap of a hesitant poet?

 

I throw myself into the poem

as if I do not belong to it,

as if I shed my skin to wear the robe of paper.

 

Every verse is a postponed nap

before the moment of painful maturity,

and I am still clutching the thread of childhood

as if it were the last rope of salvation.

 

What language is born from the nakedness of forgiveness?

From the bleeding of meaning

when the shadow grows old and refuses to sleep?

 

I plant dew on the cheeks of the poem

as if I am fertilizing it with the drunkenness of clouds—

and if it scatters,

spring will come to me from the waist of the unseen.

 

I write to suffocate… deliberately,

to taste the ash

as it transforms into a string playing the tremor of existence.

 

So, is the poem a salvation?

Or a hidden funeral we hold on the graves of the self?

 

And am I… merely a witness to the suicide of the letter,

or a murderer with ink that cannot be washed?

 

In A Suspended Being

 

I do not say "I"

except to spell out this still emptiness within me.

 

What is being?

A question stretching through my blood

like a wound without memory.

 

I am the being who loses his shadow

in the crowd of awareness,

and meaning becomes heavier than he can bear.

 

Each dawn, I wake to a call never uttered,

and to a certainty

that suddenly abandoned me.

 

I touch myself in the water,

yet existence does not wet me—

as if I am a balcony that forgot to face the light.

 

I walk weightless,

without trace—

as if I were a confusion between possibility

and the impossibility of happening.

 

Is being a prison?

Or an air too vast for the lungs?

 

I reproduce from illusion to illusion,

and find myself only

a dormant idea

in the mind of God.

 

I am not I—

I am a suggestion of absence and excess of meaning,

and echoes of a struggle between fire and clay.

 

When I knock on my heart, it does not open,

and when I beg my voice,

it receives muteness from an ancient memory.

 

O being that merge with emptiness,

why am I granted time but not myself?

 

Pain needs nothing more than a being

who understands that existence is not salvation—

but the ongoing trial of absence.

 

So erase me… that I may know who I am.

And grant me a name that denies names—

so that I may finally become my being

as silence willed it,

not as the first noise drew it.

 

TAGHRID BOU MERHI

 

TAGHRID BOU MERHI is a Lebanese-Brazilian poet, writer, author journalist, editor, essayist and translator. She is fluent in several languages. She serves as the President of CIESART in Lebanon, Literary Translation Advisor for the Platform of Writers of the Levant, and the World Union of Arab Intellectuals. She is also the Brazil representative for the "Creative" Foundation (Germany) and a global poetry advisor for CCTV (China). She has received multiple international awards, including the Nizar Sartawi Award, the Najy Naaman Award, and the Cheng Xin Award. Her works have been translated into 48 languages. She has authored 23 books, translated 45, written around 205 articles, written introductions for 48 books, and contributed to more than 210 national and international anthologies.