Dom Gabrielli studied literature at Edinburgh University and prepared for his doctorate in Paris and New York. In Paris, his passion for French literature and thought led him to begin writing, translating, and teaching. His published work includes translations of Battaille and Leiris. In the early 1990s, he left the academic world to travel and devote himself to writing while pursuing various business ventures. Dom currently lives in Paris and the Salento region of Southern Italy. For more information, visit his website.
The Beggar and the Thief
By Dom Gabrielli
By Dom Gabrielli
A lover’s food is the love of bread, not the bread. No one who really loves, loves existence.
–Rumi
i have always been a river
in which to bathe
in whispers of molten silver
and you a quarry
where men have broken their backs
searching for pebbles of gold
once i courted a diamond
to cut my wrists
in the thunderstorm of battle
and love poured down like rain
once you courted an island
to put the sea between you and the beach
luckily you kept swimming and swimming
and swam into my words
into my ocean slumber of words
love is an instant of outside
miraculously brought in
by the fiction of touch and kiss
what can matter afterwards
to the beggar who is suddenly a millionaire
to the thief who finds his booty
in an abandoned yard
When poetry makes you stop to ponder and wonder in the middle of a busy moment the writer has succeeded.
Live, love and laugh. This is beautiful.
What a hot poem!