Every Year, You Are My Beloved

Every Year, You Are My Beloved
# Every Year, You Are My Beloved

1
Every year, you are my beloved...
I say it to you,
when the clock strikes midnight,
and the past year sinks into the waters of my sorrows
like a ship made of paper...
I say it to you in my own way,
breaking all the festive rituals
the world has practiced for 1975 years...
and rejecting all the false traditions of joy
that people cling to for 1975 years...
and refusing
all the classical phrases
men have repeated to women
for 1975 years...

2
Every year, you are my beloved...
I say it to you with simplicity,
like a child reciting his prayer before sleep,
like a bird standing on a stalk of wheat...
and the flowers embroidered on your white dress
multiply by one,
and the ships waiting in the harbor of your eyes
multiply by one...
I say it to you with heat and recklessness,
like a Spanish dancer striking his foot upon the ground,
and thousands of circles form
around the globe...

3
Every year, you are my beloved...
These are the four words
I will wrap with a ribbon of reeds
and send to you on New Year’s Eve.
All the cards they sell in bookstores
do not say what I want...
and all the drawings upon them—
candles, bells, trees, snowballs,
children, angels—
do not suit me.
I do not rest with ready-made cards,
nor with ready-made poems,
nor with wishes manufactured for export.
They are all printed in Paris, or London, or Amsterdam,
written in French or English,
to fit all occasions.
But you are not a woman of occasions...
You are the woman I love.
You are this daily ache
that cannot be spoken in greeting cards,
nor in Latin letters,
nor in correspondence...
but only when the clock strikes midnight,
and you enter like a fish into my warm waters,
bathe there,
and my mouth travels in the forests of your gypsy hair
and settles there...

...

11
Every year, I am entangled with you,
pursued with the charge of loving you,
as the sky is accused of blueness,
as birds are accused of travel,
as lips are accused of turning...
Every year, I am struck by your earthquake,
drenched by your rains,
engraved—like Chinese porcelain—
with the geography of your body.
Every year, you are... I don’t know what to call you.
Choose your own names,
as a dot chooses its place on the line,
as a comb chooses its place in the folds of hair...
And until you choose your new name,
allow me to call you:
“My beloved.”