I came without knowing from where, but I came.

The poet begins by acknowledging the mystery of his own existence. Certainty about being here contrasts with uncertainty about origins, opening a sequence of questions rather than offering a final answer.

This is the opening of Abu Madi’s Al-Talasim. The poem questions existence across several stanzas, repeatedly returning to an answer of uncertainty.

The first movement acknowledges ignorance and the second states a fact. Their sequence leaves the question of origins open instead of resolving it. That beginning prepares readers for a poem returning to large questions of existence, giving uncertainty and wonder a central place.

الطلاسم, مطلع القصيدة

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