Rhino Writing Contest #3 — Her Unutterable Name

Her unutterable name is behind every other word that I dare to utter. The lament I shared with the world, apparently addressed to home and country I left behind, was really for her:

I buried your face, someplace
by the side of the new road
so I would not trip over it
every morning or on evening strolls

still, I am helplessly drawn
to the scene of this crime
for fear of forgetting
the sum of your splendor

then there’s also the rain
that loosens the soil
to reveal a bewitching feature
awash with emotion

an eye, perhaps tender or
a pale, becalmed cheek
a mouth tight with reproach or
lips pursed in a deathless smile

other times you are inscrutable
worse, is when I seem to lose you
and pick at the earth like a scab
frantic, and faithful, like a dog.

But, decades later, I am tired of picking scabs. I know, now, that to be reborn, I must consent to die to my old life. “Never grieve," Rumi offers as undying, eternal consolation, "anything you lose comes around in another form.”

I composed another poem to understand.

What unexpected turns our losses take
in winding their way back into our arms:

an absent lover can return as many others,
a nation forsaken in the shape of a new life;

poems might take the place of a mother
and friends gone come back as a wife.

If Love were not always a step ahead
how could it ensure we kept up the chase?

Outliving myself, I've come to realize this limitless love that dare not speak its name, can only truly be encompassed by the Divine. She, too, was part of the Master Plan.

"I've given you all I can," she said, as she handed me back my bewildered and aching heart. "Perhaps, the only thing I have left to gift you are these fires of separation."

It would take me a short lifetime to understand the transformative power of love gone. I survived, even thrived, just as something mortal in me also died.

Now, finding her name, the unutterable one, how many computers ago - how many years ago - did I last email her? It, finally, did not matter. Love is immortal...

I would continue to write her, as an invincible defeat, as unattainable ideal, as Longing itself. Sitting at my computer, I tenderly caressed her many, shifting guises:

True love is the One we keep returning to.

We only ever love once, though there are a hundred versions of it.

Art is the love we make by ourselves, says the ego. Art is the love we make with an invisible other, replies the spirit.

If one’s first love is for letters, people tend to come second.

Certain cherished books are like old loves. We didn’t part on bad terms; but it’s complicated, and would require too much effort to resume relations.

The exile’s love is absolute – it pines for an Ideal.

The lover is strongest who desires least.

What we love in the next world, we begin by loving here first.

Pity atheists their pitilessness. They are like persons hurt in love, who vow: never again!

Knowing ourselves is a basic courtesy to others, especially those we love.

We cannot faithfully love two – it’s either this world or the next.

Hate, too, is a species of love; perhaps our enemies are, after all, merely thwarted lovers.

Lust is the love that consumes itself.

An exile’s love is never-ending, and we are all exiles.

© Yahia Lababidi

(Images: Pixabay)