KAREEM ABDULLAH

 

 

On The Threshold Of Light

 

She is not naked...

 

She has merely shed the noise of the world, as though she had slipped from her soul the last garment stitched by disappointment, and sat listening to the heartbeat of the night.

 

Her back is a page of water upon which the moon has written its final testament. Every graceful curve is a verse from a poem no poet has ever dared to complete.

 

She holds a small lantern, yet it is not the lantern that lights the path—it is her hand. For there are hands that, when they touch the darkness, awaken within it a longing for light.

 

O woman seated between the sea and the rock, you are the question that time itself has failed to answer. Your body is nothing less than a bridge upon which the soul crosses from dust into dream.

 

I behold you from behind, and yet I know your face; for faces are not made of features, but of the directions toward which the heart forever turns.

 

I do not see in your body a fleeting temptation. I behold the first architecture of Creation, when beauty was an innocent language needing no apology, and femininity softly chanted the Names of God in the silence of the springs.

 

That trembling flame within the lantern resembles life itself. The fainter its glow becomes, the nearer one comes to discovering the true self; and the deeper the night grows, the wider the horizon of vision unfolds within the heart.

 

So remain as you are... do not turn around. Some mysteries lose their sacredness the moment they reveal their faces, and some poems can only be completed by continuing to write the back of a woman walking toward the light, while the whole world walks in the opposite direction.

 

When You Bathe Beneath The Shower

 

When you bathe beneath the shower, I do not see water alone; I see an ancient river returning to its first spring, learning from your presence the true meaning of purity.

 

The droplets glide over your shoulders as melodies flow across the strings of a celestial violin, awakening in every horizon a music that could never be complete without you.

 

It is as though the water secretly knows your name. It lingers a little longer within your radiance, slowing its descent so it may contemplate the quiet beauty that pours from you without the slightest pretense.

 

O woman who grants all things new reasons to live— even water becomes sweeter when it passes near you, and light grows gentler when it touches your shadow.

 

I behold you, and the mirrors widen to embrace what they cannot contain. Whiteness becomes another language of light, while the tiny droplets turn into transparent stars revolving around the galaxy of your presence.

 

And when the water mingles with the strands of your hair, I feel that the rain has finally found the cloud it has been seeking since the dawn of Creation.

 

How beautiful you are when you are simply yourself—far from the adornments of the world, close to the truth of your own being—as though your soul rises from the gentle waves and lifts before the universe the banner of purity.

 

Then I understand that beauty is not merely a matter of features, nor a passing form. It is that profound peace that descends upon the heart the moment it beholds you.

 

And when you bathe beneath the shower, the whole world seems to become a single drop of water... and you are the sea that gives it the meaning of existence.

 

KAREEM ABDULLAH

 

KAREEM ABDULLAH is an Iraqi poet, writer and playwright. Born in Baghdad in 1962, Kareen Abdullah is the author of "Baghdad in Its New Dress" (Book House 2015). His name has appeared in many important Arabic literary magazines and he won the Tajdeed Prose Poetry Prize in 2016. Kareem has published eight collections of poetry in Arabic and his poems have been translated into numerous languages. Creator of the highly successful cultural project that promotes poets and artists with the critical literary and stylistic analysis that he carries out in collaboration with the international cultural promoter Elisa Mascia - Italy, with subsequent publications in Alessandria today Magazine and on the blog nonsoloarteepoesia Magiche Emozioni dell'Anima. He is an official international member of Ciesart and has been published in Humanity Magazine Global