Dearest Sabine

Angles circled me, crushed me amidst themselves, though their lips fluttered my ears heard no voice. Most clear became the speech, by what followed in my actions; the angelic dictate took the form of my body incubating prostrations and bows to the Almighty. Thousands of times I bowed and unnumbered prostrations left these insatiable heavenly birds circling me to collapse upon myself righteous and on my last prostration, when painlessly my forehead broke, they set sails upon the serene rapids of mine tears finding myself utterly aloof. Seized the opportunity to escape, and it was not even one step taken, where I found myself hurrying down the stairs to your flat in America. Scared as I was in this strangest of all lands, any bit of courage I could muster crushed in between my trembling palms and likeness of a snowball I avalanched to your door.

The gray metallic door in complete and unconditional obedience to the edict of the Sultan of Love stayed locked and my hands no longer anything of my own dared not to violate the sanctuary of your home, hung from me like the melancholic branches of an old weeping willows. Sabine my eyes heard the click-clack of your sandals on cedar plank floors and my ears cried in silence, finding you alone away from all people and their evil.

Creole curses woke me up like a nurse raising my head only to taste the pain, injuries and ailments, but yet caressing me with the hollow comfort in unspoken words, “You are not the only one in pain”. Indeed the only fulfilled promise ever! ... Beheld these really wondrous Haitians black as the Paradiso-pearls on Prophet’s tent; these Majestic creatures affected me in a manner not easy to unfold. As though, I was from a far away land like a Persian totally un-Haitian but in most peculiar way I was one of them, close by and yet my life-force galloping in a distant land like the stallion of a horseman:

The distance between
Creole dusted “I love you” and the truth
Riddled by millions of my dead tears
Martyred in countless battles fought in my eyes
Each died bravely, with honor
Lain still in silent embraces of my young sobs
Buried deep in graveyard of my antique face

Creole screams for a home, unheard
Muffled underneath the shade
Of a capsized boat
Devoured by the silent whale of amnesia
In unchanging, shapeless waters of Atlantico

Creole pungent lies forever drowned
Under the tumultuous stampede
Galloping fast Turkmen stallions of my heart
Devoured by the silent Persian whale of a love
In ever-changing, shape-shifting sand dunes of Arabia

I had cried through the dream, and the quill of melancholy had scribbled upon my dark face, dry traces of the brook of happiness, a short-lived happiness of a dream, an arid line down my cheeks, like a greedy landowner making definite the borders of his property. And my face, parted in half, owned a part by hope and the rest held dear hungrily by the most feudal of all landowners: Misery.

Sabine, I wiped not the creases of the forgotten tears, let all see that I am no longer a man made from black clay, but I am a creature not of this earth, truly made from purest rolling tears rained upon this life by the thundering monsoon of sobs.

We rode like the wanton kings and queens on an antique throne, carried down the unholy Nile for the last rites, to be taken to afterlife in our lofty pyramids, pyramids not made from blocks of stone but ever-lasting never-ending tears. And not upon the sand hills of a desert, instead upon the water dunes of Atlantico.

I gazed upon the woman cussing in rapid sprouts and looked upon the man echoing the same anger in Creole. Neither listened to the other, because they no longer hear from the ears and all voices and every word in the universe are void and forbidden for them.

Gender has galloped away, extreme of hunger and poverty wiped away all manhood and womanhood, leaving behind only the beauty of humanity! Sexless, love-less, pure human existence enrobed by pain and embroidered by indefinite endurance.

In this vessel manufactured from the ancient lumber of misery, I love you Sabine not as a man with sexual taint, I love you Sabine for splendor of the glory from which your existence and mine have been extracted.

This love, I understand not much of it, A force of gravity pulling towards you, with no expectations of fulfillment or destiny, only pure uninhibited love as though in the universe there is only you & I, and the third the Sultan of Love.



© 2003-2002,  Dara Shayda