770 | I SAW HER

Detail, Painting by Issmat Abdulkader

I SAW HER

Was it dream or reality?

I don’t know …

But I saw her in the colors

of the springtime,

In the mountains and rivers,

And in the trees and crops.

I was so joyful,

I made a bouquet from rays of light,

bound it with

strands of gray hair

And went toward her.

Hussein Habash, Kurdistan, 1948

Translated from Kurdish by Forrest McMunn

from „Dort funkeln die Lippen der Steine“,
AVLOS-Verlag Sank Augustin, Germany, 1994