An exceptional love for an exceptional woman

An exceptional love for an exceptional woman
-1-
The most tormenting thing in loving you...
Is that I cannot love you more...
And the most annoying thing in my five senses...
Is that they remained five... no more...
An extraordinary woman like you
Needs extraordinary senses...
Extraordinary longings...
Extraordinary tears...
And a fourth religion...
With its teachings, its rituals, its incense, its fire.
An extraordinary woman like you...
Needs books written for her alone...
A sorrow belonging only to her...
And a death with millions of rooms...
Where she dwells alone...
But alas...
I cannot knead the seconds
Into rings to place upon your fingers.
For the year is bound by its months,
And the months are bound by their weeks,
And the weeks are bound by their days,
And my days by the succession of night and day
In your violet eyes...

-2-
The most tormenting thing in language... is that it does not suffice for you.
And the most annoying thing in writing... is that it cannot write you.
You are a difficult woman...
You are a woman who cannot be written.
My words pant like horses upon your heights...
And my vocabulary is not enough to cross your light-years.
With you there is no problem...
My problem is with the alphabet...
With twenty-eight letters, not enough to cover an inch of your femininity...
Not enough to offer one prayer of thanks for your beautiful face.
What saddens me in my relation with you...
Is that you are multiple...
And language is one...
So what do you suggest I do?
To reconcile with my language...
And remove this estrangement...
Between porcelain and fingers,
Between your polished surfaces...
And my wagons buried in snow...
Between the ocean of your waist...
And the ambition of my boats...
To discover the roundness of the earth...

-3-
Perhaps you were satisfied with me...
Because I made you like princesses in children’s books,
And painted you like angels upon church ceilings...
But I am not satisfied with myself...
For I could have painted you better,
But time surprised me
While I was suspended between copper... and milk...
Between drowsiness... and the sea...
Between the nails of desire... and the flesh of mirrors...
Between curved lines... and straight lines.
Perhaps you were content, like all women,
With any love poem said about you...
But I am not content with your contentment...
There are hundreds of words asking to meet me...
And I do not meet them...
There are hundreds of poems...
Waiting hours in the waiting room...
And I apologize to them...
I am not searching for some poem...
For some woman...
But I am searching for *your* poem...

-4-
I am reproachful of my body...
Because it could not wear you better...
Reproachful of the pores of my skin...
Because they could not wear you better...
Reproachful of my mouth...
Because it did not catch the pearls scattered along your shores better...
Reproachful of my imagination...
Because it did not imagine how lightning and rainbows
Could erupt from your breasts that did not celebrate
Their eighteenth birthday officially...
But what use is reproach now...
After our relation became like a pale orange
Fallen into the sea...
Your body was full of the possibilities of rain...
And the seismograph beneath your round navel like a child’s mouth...
Foretold the trembling of the earth...
And gave signs of Judgment Day...
But I was not clever enough...
To catch your signals...
Nor cultured enough...
To read the thoughts of wave and foam...
And hear the rhythm of your bloodstream...

-5-
The most tormenting thing in my history with you...
Is that I treated you like Bidpai the philosopher...
And not like Rimbaud... Zorba...
Van Gogh... Abu Nuwas... and all the madmen.
I treated you like a university professor...
Afraid to love his beautiful student...
So as not to lose his academic honor...
That is why I feel an overwhelming urge to apologize to you...
For all the mystical poems I recited to you...
When you came to me...
Full like a spike of wheat...
Fresh like a fish just out of the sea...

-6-
I apologize to you...
On behalf of Ibn al-Farid, Jalal al-Din Rumi, and Ibn Arabi...
For all the theorizing... the drifting... the symbols... the masks
That I made upon my face in the room of love...
When what was required of me...
Was to be sharp as a blade,
And aggressive as an African leopard...
I feel an urge to apologize to you...
For my absence without equal...
My cowardice without equal...
And for all the proverbs...
That I memorized by heart...
And recited upon your small breasts...
So they cried like punished children... and slept without dinner...

-7-
I confess to you, my lady...
That you were an extraordinary woman,
And that my absence was extraordinary...
So allow me to recite before you the act of repentance
For all the wise stances I took...
For it has become clear to me...
After I lost the race...
Lost my money...
And my horses...
That wisdom is the worst dish we can offer...
To a woman we love...