Paper Poetry Daou ضوء Series
Holding It Together
Daou being Arabic for light & illumination
“Wine is sunlight, held together by water.” Galileo
O, for a real Elixir of Love – not Dulcamara’s bottle of cheap red wine nor even Daou’s finest
but a blend of helium and hydrogen tasting of transcendence, truth effervescent with All entwining the beams of my arbor of ضوء with double-flowered oxygen molecules –
breathlessly abundant clusters of trust orbed, fermenters of miracles, the ascendant kind of abandonment, a bacchanalia minus so much as a droplet of mean bumpkin-esque brutality shadowed with a taste of its own pain
May my sole lust be a compulsion for Divinity, for compassion, for intoxication erupting from vats of empathy – air-pocketed lava shape-shifting my hands to fold in prayer or, better yet, reach outward
as una furtiva lagrima coats the delicate glass held, tremulously, by another whose heart has come to fear yet one more beat, one more leaf of ash, one last sip
©Jenine Bsharah Baines 2021
I love the quote by Galileo. Enough said.
I also love opera — albeit, as my grandfather would say, “It’s an acquired taste, like chicken livers.”
The opera referenced throughout this poem is Donizetti’s L’elisir d’amore (The Elixir of Love). Una furtiva lagrima (a furtive tear) is a gorgeous tenor aria I’ve long loved since my days as a co-director of the LA District for the Met Opera National Council’s audition program.
I especially love these lines from the aria:
Di più non chiedo, non chiedo. Si può morire! Si può morir d’amor.
I could ask for nothing more, nothing more. Yes, I could die! Yes, I could die of love
Though my soul, Anna, sings them as a love psalm to the world, harmonized with prayers that my art may help heal others whose ‘cup’ is coated with wine tears of pain.
DAOU. DAOU. DAOU.
You can listen to the ضوء -infused drink of luscious ethereal beauty here. Try it, skeptics, please. I get goosebumps every sip.
Thank you, Indubala Kachhawa, for inviting me to take part in this series for Paper Poetry. Love you, too, Suntonu Bhadra and Carolyn Hastings.
Thank you, dearest readers. My daou. My heartbeats.
Editorial Note: Paper Poetry is runs a themed poetry series of four poems over a month. If you want to be a part of it, kindly check this,