nizar qabbani
My brilliant friend Hasan recommended the Syrian poet Nizar Qabbani. A sprinkling of favorite lines:
if another gives you a ship
I shall give you the journey.
Had I told the sea
What I felt for you,
It would have left its shores,
Its shells,
Its fish,
And followed me.
[Your love] has taught me to leave my house
to comb the sidewalks
and search your face in raindrops
and in car lights