Matthew Pocock

“In the summer
I stretch out on the shore
And think of you
Had I told the sea
What I felt for you,
It would have left its shores,
Its shells,
Its fish,
And followed me.”
― Nizar Qabbani

“In the forest of sensible objects that surrounds me, I find my way to becoming master of the chaos of the sensations assailing me only by separating objects from others, by giving them outline, dimensions, and form; in short, by creating unity in diversity and vividly and confidently designating these objects with the stamp of my inner sense, as if this were a seal of truth. Our whole life, then, is to a certain extent poetics: we do not see images but rather create them. The Divinity has sketched them for us on a great panel of light, from which we trace their outlines and paint the images in the soul using a finer brush than that of the rays of light. For the image that is projected on the retina of your eye is not the idea that you derive from its object; it is merely a product of your inner sense, a work of art created by your soul’s faculty of perception.”
― Johann Gottfried Herder, Selected Writings on Aesthetics

“To put it another way, it is possible to say, in Sufi terminology, that the Surrealists see the immediate manifest existence, in social and cultural terms, as a vast prison, from which it is man’s primary duty to escape to a free world in which the inner existence will open up to him.”
― Adonis

“هذي دمشق.. وهذي الكأس والراح
إني أحب... وبعـض الحـب ذباح
أنا الدمشقي.. لو شرحتم جسدي
لسـال منه عناقيـدٌ.. وتفـاح
و لو فتحـتم شراييني بمديتكـم
سمعتم في دمي أصوات من راحوا
زراعة القلب.. تشفي بعض من عشقو
وما لقلـبي –إذا أحببـت جـراح

This is Damascus... and this is a glass of spirit (comfort)
I am in love... but I am aware of the fact that certain kinds of love can slaughter you in wrath
I am a Damascene... if you dissect me into halves
You will have but grapes... and apples falling in your path
Open my veins with scalpels
Hear ancestral chants
If heart transplants... can cure some of the passionate
Why does mine stay torn in half then?”
― Nizar Qabbani