Light the first light of evening, as in a room In which we rest and, for small reason, think The world imagined is the ultimate good. This is, therefore, the intensest rendezvous. It is in that thought that we collect ourselves, Out of all the indifferences, into one thing: Within a single thing, a single shawl Wrapped tightly round us, since we are poor, a warmth, A light, a power, the miraculous influence. Here, now, we forget each other and ourselves. We feel the obscurity of an order, a whole, A knowledge, that which arranged the rendezvous. Within its vital boundary, in the mind. We say God and the imagination are one... How high that highest candle lights the dark. Out of this same light, out of the central mind, We make a dwelling in the evening air, In which being there together is enough.
From The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens. Copyright © 1954 by Wallace Stevens. Used with permission of Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.
translated from the Arabic by Khaled Mattawa
Alone, now you are free.
You pick a sky and name it
a sky to live in
a sky to refuse
But if you want know
if you are really free
and to remain free
you must steady yourself
on a foothold of earth
so that the earth may rise
so that you may give
wings
to the children of earth
below
Copyright © 2019 by Khaled Mattawa. Reprinted with the permission of Khaled Mattawa.