Don’t believe our outlines, forget them | and begin from your own words. | As if you are the first to write poetry | or the last poet. |  | If you read our work, let it not be an extension of our airs, | but to correct our errs | in the book of agony. |  | Don’t ask anyone: Who am I? | You know who your mother is. | As for your father, be your own. |  | Truth is white, write over it | with a crow’s ink. | Truth is black, write over it | with a mirage’s light. |  | If you want to duel with a falcon | soar with the falcon. |  | If you fall in love with a woman, | be the one, not she, | who desires his end. |  | Life is less alive than we think but we don’t think | of the matter too much lest we hurt emotions’ health. |  | If you ponder a rose for too long | you won’t budge in a storm. |  | You are like me, but my abyss is clear. | And you have roads whose secrets never end. | They descend and ascend, descend and ascend. |  | You might call the end of youth | the maturity of talent | or wisdom. No doubt, it is wisdom, | the wisdom of a cool non-lyric. |  | One thousand birds in the hand | don’t equal one bird that wears a tree. |  | A poem in a difficult time | is beautiful flowers in a cemetery. |  | Example is not easy to attain | so be yourself and other than yourself | behind the borders of echo. |  | Ardor has an expiration date with extended range. | So fill up with fervor for your heart’s sake, | follow it before you reach your path. |  | Don’t tell the beloved, you are I | and I am you, say | the opposite of that: we are two guests | of an excess, fugitive cloud. |  | Deviate, with all your might, deviate from the rule. |  | Don’t place two stars in one utterance | and place the marginal next to the essential | to complete the rising rapture. |  | Don’t believe the accuracy of our instructions. | Believe only the caravan’s trace. |  | A moral is as a bullet in its poet’s heart | a deadly wisdom. | Be strong as a bull when you’re angry | weak as an almond blossom | when you love, and nothing, nothing | when you serenade yourself in a closed room. |  | The road is long like an ancient poet’s night: | plains and hills, rivers and valleys. | Walk according to your dream’s measure: either a lily | follows you or the gallows. |  | Your tasks are not what worry me about you. | I worry about you from those who dance | over their children’s graves, | and from the hidden cameras | in the singers’ navels. |  | You won’t disappoint me, | if you distance yourself from others, and from me. | What doesn’t resemble me is more beautiful. |  | From now on, your only guardian is a neglected future. |  | Don’t think, when you melt in sorrow | like candle tears, of who will see you | or follow your intuition’s light. | Think of yourself: is this all of myself? |  | The poem is always incomplete, the butterflies make it whole. |  | No advice in love. It’s experience. | No advice in poetry. It’s talent. |  | And last but not least, Salaam.