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

“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

“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

“Knowledge is not seeing the visible; knowledge is seeing what lies behind it: the invisible. It is knowing the internal nature of objects.”
― Adonis