A Letter to the Sun

THE NEW YORKER – Poem

May 1993

Suha Naimy

A Letter to the Sun

Sitting alone in my shell

Surrounded with walls, walls of ice,

A candle light is all I have

To light my face a rolling dice. 

My candle rhymes tempting dances

On the thick walls of my cocoon.

Flames bend and curve on my crannied fences

As I stand and observe illusions of doom. 

Are these my candle or my thought reflections

Up on the bricks of my dark dungeon?

Walls of ice never melt,

Thickening each day,

Closer to death.

How long should I sit in the shade?

How long shall I watch the withering flame?

Is this all what I am?  A shadow?

Do shadows handcuff?  Do shadows cripple?

How can I know?  An incredible riddle.

Is knowledge anything but a fainting idol? 

The shell’s animal anaesthetized,

The sea around hums with tide,

Ebb and flow is the silence,

Ebb and flow my emotion,

Ebb and flow is existence. 

What’s the sea but a shadow of the moon?

What’s the shell but a shadow of the sea?

What am I but a shadow of the sun,

Lost in a heap of ghosts,

Suffocating from non-existence. 

A letter to the sun,

No more broken mirrors,

Pleading refletions,

No more refractions. 

A letter to the sun,

In search of my personal identity,

Let me be,

Set me free. 

A letter to the sun,

No more candle lights,

No more reflections,

Let me be the light,

Let me be the sun.

 Suha Naimy