KINGDOM OF TALK

By Charbel Baini

Translated by Mirna Nehme

-1-

I thought that I talked

But talk is a fog

I see it as I walk

A shining spark of a match

-2-

Don't say that I heard

My talk is tangible

Its letters on a paper I gathered

And I hung them in a pin,

An icon on the chest of the universe

The colour in love with it

And in it the perfume imprisoned.

-3-

In teary nights,

I mixed from the soil of talk

A human being

I ask: he answers

I am sad: he reproaches me

And draws in my Palm a kingdom

Of smoky threads

And says: Oh, my son,

You are the king

How beautiful you are,

I threw the entire world

In your hands to pass time

God created it complicated,

Do not upset the lord

With your boldness, solve it.

-4-

I laughed when I said:

 I arrived

Where? Not known

And the path in front of me

Compacted with my bones,

With laments however I leaned

It breaks my words

With sighs which stood rows

On my dreams beaches.

And what a falling thought

Never after it a fall

Million small letters

Gather as a guard

On the sides of a tear

And boil my blood

Increase my worry

How do I write quickly?

And the age is a spark

How do I accompany the word?

And the return is not safe!

**