"I Have No Power"

’I have no power to change you

or explain your ways-

Never believe a man can change a woman

Those men are pretenders

who think

that they created woman

from one of their ribs

Woman does not emerge from a man’s rib’s, not ever,

it’s he who emerges from her womb

like a fish rising from depths of water

and like streams that branch away from a river

It’s he who circles the sun of her eyes

and imagines he is fixed in place

I have no power to tame you

or domesticate you

or mitigate your first instincts

This task is impossible

I’ve tested my intelligence on you

also my dumbness

Nothing worked with you, neither guidance

nor temptation

Stay primitive as you are

I have no power to break your habits

for thirty years you have been like this

for three hundred years

a storm trapping in a bottle

a body by nature sensing the scent of a man

assaults it by nature

triumphs over it by nature

 

Never believe what a man says about himself

that he is the one who makes the poems

and makes the children

It is the woman who writes the poems

and the man who signs his name to them

It is the woman who bears the children

and the man who signs at the maternity hospital

that he is the father

I have no power to change your nature

my books are of no use to you

and my convictions do not convince you

nor does my fatherly council do you any good

you are the queen of anarchy, of madness, of belonging

to no one

Stay that way

You are the tree of femininity that grows in the dark

needs no sun or water

you the sea princess who has loved all men

and loved no one

slept with all men… and slept with no one

you are the Bedouin woman who went with all the tribes

and returned a virgin

Stay that way.’

Nizar Qabbani

(1923-1998)