“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 ribs, 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.”
by NIZAR QABBANI (1923-1998)
Public Domain Poetry
unbolt me 
Another excellent find, remarkably elegant and powerful.
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So glad you enjoyed this, Dolly. There’s a whole world of poets out there (past and present), and we love exploring it!
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I do appreciate your discovering these gems and sharing them. Your selections are always wonderful.
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Thank you, Dolly. 😄
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My pleasure, Tony.
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Thank you for posting 🙏
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Thank you for reading!
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“Stay that way,” at the end seems to negate the tenor of the poem. What the poem says is women do what they want, which is beneficial to all. The next-to-last line is almost as odd. I understand what he meant, but being any kind of virgin is a male concept, from when virginity was prized above all things a woman could be. “Stay that way,” is telling women what to do. So, yeah, personally, I wouldn’t say those things lest I get in big trouble.
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It’s certainly an interesting poem in that it makes me consider my white male privilege. I’m not entirely sure that this was the original author’s intent, of course, but it certainly stopped me in my tracks. It got me to thinking about the mythology of ‘virginity’ as pushed by patriarchal ideologues and how the world really would be better off if women were treated like the equal human beings they are (and always have been) rather than mere reproductive machines to be bought, traded and owned. Definitely a provocative poem for sure.
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