You who in a minefield perform the morning prayer,
from today’s rulers, expect not but words.
Expect nothing but love letters
back. Don’t look, our imam,
nothing there except ignorance and darkness.
Nothing there except mud and smut.
Nothing there except miscarriage and dwarf cities,
where the rich eat the poor,
where the big eats the small,
where non-order eats order
 
O you old voyager over thorns and pains!
O you! luminous as a star, glittering like a sword.
Had it not been for you we would idolaters still be
and we would openly be addicts of dream hashish.
Permit us to kiss the sword in your grip.
From your boots, permit us to remove the dust.
Had you not come, you, our master and imam,
in front the Hebrew leader,
we would have been like slaughtered sheep.

One day history shall remember a small village,
among the southern villages,
called “Maarakah” (Battle).
It defended with its bare chest
the land’s honor, and Arab honor,
surrounded with cowardly tribes
and a disunited nation.

With Saida’s sea the question begins.
From its sea the prophet’s men jump every night.
Like orange trees they are,
From Sour’s sea,
the dagar, the rose and the Mawal**
And the heroes from underground they spring!

O sword glittering in between tobacco leaves and straw!
O stallion winning in the fury’s wilderness!
Not a word of rulers' writings you should read.
Their wars are rumors.
Their swords are wooden.
Their passion is traitorous.
Their promises are lies.
To a word of their orations do not listen!
They are nothing but grammar and literature.
They are nothing but chimeras, and chants.

O my master, master of the free,
except for you nobody is left.
In the time of defeat and destruction.
In the time of revolutionary retreat
and intellectual retreat,
national retreat,
thieves and merchants;
in the time of flight,
words went up for rent or sale

Except for you nobody is left.
On thorns and glass you walk.
The respected brothers
asleep like hatching hens on eggs.
In time of war they flee like hens.
O master!
In salt cities inhabited by plague and dust;
in the death cities that fear visits of rain,
except for you nobody is left.
Planting in our lives palms, grapes and moons
Except for you nobody… no body… nobody…
is left.
So open daytime gates

**Mawal – Folkloric  Arab song

Notes

A poem by Nizar Qabani, dedicated to South Lebanon after "Operation Grapes of Wrath", 2006

Translated by Adib S. Kawar and revised by Les Blough