I will say I love you

I will say I love you
I will tell you “I love you”
when all the languages of ancient passion
have ended,
and lovers have nothing left to say…
or to do.

Then my mission will begin—
to change the stones of this world,
to change its architecture,
tree by tree,
planet by planet,
poem by poem.

I will tell you “I love you”…
and the distance will shrink
between your eyes and my notebooks.
The air you breathe
will pass through my lungs,
and the hand you place
on the car seat
will be my hand.

I will say it,
when I am able
to summon my childhood,
my horses,
my soldiers,
my paper boats…
to recover the blue time with you
on the shores of Beirut,
when you trembled like a fish
between my fingers,
and I covered you,
as you fell asleep,
with a blanket of summer stars.

I will tell you “I love you”…
for the wheat stalks need you to ripen,
the springs need you to burst forth,
civilization needs you to become civilized,
the birds need you to learn to fly,
and the butterflies need you to learn to paint.

I will tell you “I love you”…
when the borders fall completely
between you and the poem,
when sleeping upon a page of writing
becomes no easy matter,
outside the rhythms of poetry,
nor entering into dialogue
with a body I cannot spell—
word by word,
syllable by syllable.

I do not suffer
from the intellectuals’ complex,
but my nature rejects bodies
that do not speak with intelligence,
and eyes that do not ask questions.
For desire, to me,
is bound to the condition of poetry.
The woman is a poem—
I die when I write her,
and I die when I forget her.

I will tell you “I love you”…
when I am healed
from the schizophrenia that tears me apart,
and I return to being one person.
I will say it,
when the city and the desert
make peace within me,
when all the tribes depart
from the shores of my blood—
blood carved by the sages
of the Third World upon my body,
tested for thirty years,
disfiguring my masculinity,
issuing a sentence
to lash you eighty lashes
on the charge of femininity.

Therefore,
I will not tell you “I love you” today,
and perhaps not tomorrow.
For the earth takes nine months
to bring forth a flower,
the night suffers greatly
to give birth to a star,
and humanity waits thousands of years
to bring forth a prophet.

So why not wait a little while…
to become my beloved?