In the boundless spaces where language meets the soul, shines the name of Taghrid Bou Merhi, a Lebanese-Brazilian poet of profound gifts whose verses have traveled far beyond borders. A multilingual writer, journalist, translator, and essayist, Taghrid has become a bridge between worlds, carrying in her words the fragrance of East and West. With a commanding presence in the literary scene, she serves as President of CIESART Líbano, appointed by the International Chamber of Writers and Artists, and is an active force in more than ten print and online magazines, where her editorial work illuminates countless voices.
Taghrid has authored an astonishing 23 books, translated 40 volumes, and contributed to over 75 international anthologies, with more than 56 articles and 16 book presentations to her name. Her poetry, shimmering with the resonance of five languages, has been rendered into 47 tongues, echoing in hearts across continents. She has received international awards of high prestige, among them the Nizar Sartawi International Creativity Award (2021), the SahityaPata Kazi Nazrul Islam Memorial Award (2022), and the Naji Numan Award (2023), to name only a few. Recognized for her journalistic excellence with the Zheng Nian Cup Prize and crowned one of the top 20 international journalists by Legacy Crown, she is a voice of fierce integrity and artistic depth.
Beyond the realm of poetry, Taghrid contributes as an advisor to literary and cultural organizations around the globe — from the International Union of Arab Intellectuals to Chinese media giant CCTV — and acts as the international ambassador for the Organization of Creativity for Peace in London. With a degree in law and political science, she also devotes herself to teaching Arabic to non-native speakers, a living testament to her passion for cross-cultural understanding. Through her tireless work, Taghrid Bou Merhi has become a constellation in the sky of world literature, charting new routes for hope, resilience, and the music of humanity’s collective heart.
In these verses, Taghrid Bou Merhi unveils how a poet’s soul is etched page by page across life’s seasons — from innocence to loss, from hope to acceptance — capturing in delicate imagery how every moment is preserved in the fragile wings of words.
PAGES OF THE SOUL
The poems are the wings of our souls
They soar between the pages of days,
Preserved by memory, or scattered by the wind
Into the corners of oblivion.
Yet, I love all my poems,
For each one carries my face
In a fleeting moment of life.
The last joyful page
Was hidden on the branch of a tree before my window,
When my soul turned green for the first time,
Filled with hope.
On that day, I wrote my dreams
On linden leaves
And hung them on the doors of tomorrow.
The last sorrowful page fell
When I encountered the profound meaning of loss,
Realizing that some faces
That left our lives will never return,
And that the phone holds no numbers
To console the absence.
The last nostalgic page still sleeps
On the shelves of my heart.
It awakens with the rise of the moon
To weave stories in the threads of night.
It is the page that carries the scent of mothers
And the songs of childhood,
Still floating on the memory of time.
The first page I ever read
Was on my father's features,
As he spoke to me about the land
That vanished beyond the borders.
I was young then,
But that page continued to travel with me,
Until I read it again on the face of the clouds
When the sea took our loved ones
And never returned them.
The most beautiful page
Is the one I welcomed with hope,
When I held my heart in my hands for the first time.
That page was filled with love and wonder,
And I still keep it
In the diaries of my prayers every morning.
The truest page
Is the one I write now,
When I decided to let the little girl inside me
Run free without restraint,
Painting words
As if they were butterflies
Soaring in a new morning.
Author : Taghrid Bou Merhi©®
Brazil
All Rights Reserved To The Author
Here, Taghrid becomes a traveler through civilizations, reflecting on the spiritual, intellectual, and cultural echoes of humanity. Her poem becomes a prism through which the East, West, South, and North reveal their ancient, shared consciousness, harmonized in diversity.
Mirrors Of Consciousness
In the vast deserts of thought,
I see minarets rising into the sky,
And the sounds of bells soothing the wind,
I listen to chants intertwining
Like the light of candles in temples.
Here in the East,
Consciousness is a Sufi prayer
Dancing on the edge of the unseen,
Its visions undulate like waves in the sea of secrets.
And in the West,
It is the questioning of the mind,
Searching for truth in the equations of stars and the lines of palms.
In the South,
Souls unite
With the earth in dances
Writing on the soil the tales of the first creation.
And in the North,
The whisper of the winds is a song
Telling the wisdom of the mountains
And guiding the fog to the silence of snow.
As if cultures are mirrors reflecting consciousness in their colours,
Each civilization tells the story of humanity
Between shadow and light,
Between the beginning and the endless.
In these haunting lines, the poet enters the desert of longing, where voices and memories wander among wounds and dreams. Taghrid’s powerful metaphors reveal a raw vulnerability, acknowledging how the soul trembles in the corridors of yearning.
THE WILDERNESS OF THE SOUL!
I am here…
And no echo breaks the vast gates
And your voice…!
A prophetic coincidence
Trips over the wilderness of my soul beyond the lung of dreams.
And because the holes of time are drowsy
I stole a glance at the face of a cloud
From the proximity of a wound and a blind memory.
So salt seeped from a tear of insomnia
And cries rose from the clay of suspicion.
I thought I was incapable of embodying my foolish arguments
As I made a narrow place for them with fake names.
And here, on ruins upon ruins
The transparency of the soul groans
In the custody of the train..!
And here… your voice
Rubbing against mine in the furrows of longing
Moistening the thirst of longing
Between anticipation and the shirt of patience..!
©®TAGHRID BOU MERHI-LEBANON / BRAZIL
