In the presence of absence

In the presence of absence, line by line I remove you before me with efficiency only found in readings / And as you commanded me, I now stand in your name to thank your mourners for this final journey, and to invite them to shorten the farewell and turn to a celebratory dinner befitting your memory / So permit me to see you as you have left me and I have left you, safe as pure prose on a stone that greens or yellows in your absence / And permit me to mourn you, and your name, as the travelers mourn what the olive pickers hid of grains with stones / And let us go together, you and I, on two paths: you, to a second life, promised by language, in a reader who may survive a meteor falling to the earth / And I, to an appointment I postponed more than once, with death, which I promised with a glass of red wine in one of the poems / For the poet, there is no shame in lying / And he only lies in love. Author: Mahmoud Darwish Number of pages: 142