Overwhelming Grief
Translated by: Dr. Sharef Fayez

I beg the wind before it blows away:
Wind, oh dear wind!
From where did you bring this aroma of bread?
For in my house, bread is still an unending tale                                             

The wind is also bringing fear from deserts
where wolves are thirsting for the history’s blood
All this caravan of tulips and green thoughts
with swallows once heralding the spring
-- all lost and wandering now  --
is rotting in the depth of its grief
And the ringing sound of the caravan’s bell,
with awful grief, warns:
This disaster, still small, is growing in size

The wind arrives and the orchard --
empty as the palms of an orphan—
keeps its gate closed 
for not having much to offer
Save its colorful banquet cloth, everything else is despoiled:
not a piece of bread on its table cloth
not a blade of grass on its stream’s bank
not a lantern under the canopy of its pine trees
not anything else to offer 
This house is in utter ruins, fluttering, like a disaster flag,
over the dome-tops of the tall pine trees
Bodies of green trees are fallen on the ground
like martyred bodies
as if deceitfully stabbed from behind 
Their branches bearing leaves of destruction with
every leaf from the bud turned to ashes
with their eyes searching for water
The wind is no longer humming behind the door
knowing that for years now – to the woe of the orchard!--
fire has flown from the stream’s recollection
in place of that crystal water