«​ليَبِعْ لي أحدُكم حزْنَه»

Here I am

searching for inhabitants of this iceberg in my memory,

for people who chose their way of dying happily,

for the stories they never got to tell,

I am looking for those strange birds

that built their homes of melancholy inside me,

for elephants that barter all this sadness with me,

and have left behind caves of bones for their solitude,

for a woman who carries my mother's sorrow,

embracing the dryness of my hands like a seer,

making me tremble like her hair's handkerchief under a stormy rain,

and clinging to me for a while;

I am the child whom all this rain cannot wet his senses,

nor return him home at night,

his pockets filled with tulip flowers

and sweet pastries.

I want any fair exchange for this sadness,

even with an old dog pained by loneliness with your poems,

with a dolphin or a swan that lost its young,

with a bride from the villagers

being led to the house of a man she does not love;

I want anything suitable for a final smile,

I want a beloved death among the songs,

sleeping blissfully while dreaming of being led home in the morning.