No po-mojo and Meryl

Hello Escritori,

Hope you’re all doing well, I’ve got nothing poem shaped. I’m sorry. I’m okay, just the mojo is not a-flowin’. I’ve been trying to inspire myself by finding Nizami translations. He is wonderful at conveying both the wonder and the spirituality of love: definitely one of those ‘wow, why didn’t I think of that!?’ poets.

Unfortunately he’s mainly in his original languages of Farsi and Dari which I unfortunately do not speak, hence the need for translation. Hopefully something will come up on the poetic front, I have a couple of sounding phrases I’ve stolen from here and there, give them a different colour and they’re yours – all the best artists steal – right Meryl Streep?

Yesterday I discovered the Arabic word for ‘tear’ as in ‘teardrop’ – ibra al ain – something which has passed from/exceeded the boundary of the eye. Al ain, is the eye. Masha’Allah, I haven’t made any serious effort to learn it, but etymologically, Arabic is endlessly interesting to me.

How people process phenomena within the logic of language and describe the same thing in different ways is fascinating and very telling. Like tu me manques in French, translated as ‘I miss you’ but is actually constructed as ‘you are missing from me.’

In Arabic, there are fourteen different words for love, that innately relate to each kind and nuance of the emotion, the word, gharam for example is passionate love. Urdu speakers would recognise it as connoting ‘heat’ and then when coupled with ‘love’ would make the adequate deductions, whereas poor ‘love’ in English has to be weighed down with clarifying and quantifying adjectives.

Digressions like this make me remember that although English IS the language of my heart, my home language, and my spiritual language are so apart from English that some of that heart can’t help but use the most apt  words from anywhere in trying to express itself. This also goes for additional learned languages. I might say ‘there was such a huge mezcla of things going on today…’  because Spanish seems best.

All words should be in the service of love, though love itself needs none.

Keep scribbling, pray for rain and quatrains.

(I would use those, but I already have.)

~ Pola ~