Cairo

By Yahia Lababidi

---

Yahia Lababidi

I buried your face, someplace

by the side of the new road

so I would not trip over it

every morning or on evening strolls
 

still, I am helplessly drawn

to the scene of this crime

for fear of forgetting

the sum of your splendor

 

then there's also the rain

that loosens the soil

to reveal a bewitching feature

awash with emotion

 

an eye, perhaps tender or

a pale, becalmed cheek

a mouth tight with reproach or

lips pursed in a deathless smile

 

other times you are inscrutable

worse, is when I seem to lose you

and pick at the earth like a scab

frantic, and faithful, like a dog.

About the Author

Oscar Wilde, Friedrich Nietzsche, Mark Twain and Yahia Lababidi have something in common. They're all authors of aphorisms, provocative and often humorous bite-size thoughts... Lababidi's aphorisms, by his own definition, are 'complete fragments'. Witty, resonant, and precise, they capture the contradictory nature of human truths and sentiments, reflecting 'the soul's dialogue with itself'. James Geary, Europe editor for TIME magazine and author of The World in a Phrase, calls them "elegant, thoughtful and wise." Egyptian-Lebanese Yahia Lababidi is one of a very few contemporary writers to have their work included in the Encyclopedia of the World's Aphorists by James Geary, due November 2007. His essays and poems have been published in journals world-wide in the USA, UK, Australia, Canada, Middle East and in online literary reviews. Lababidi was the featured poet in November 2006 on RAWI: Radius of Arab American Writers

Excerpts from article by Dale Jungk, Editor-in-Chief Sun Rising Press, on-line source.