Michael Beard và Adnan Haydar

I said to you (tiếng Anh)

I said to you I listened to the seas.
I heard them read their poems to me. I listened to the bell that sleeps within the oysters.
I told you I sang
at the devil’s wedding, that banquet of fairy tales.
I told you I saw
in the falling rain of history, in the glare of distance,
I saw a genie and a house.

Because I sail within my eyes
I can tell you I have seen everything
right from the first step I took into the distance.

Homeland (tiếng Anh)

To faces shrunk under a mask of sadness
I bow down. To the paths where I forgot my tears,
for a father who died green, like a cloud,
a sail still unfurled in his face,
I bow down. To a child who has been sold
so he might pray and shine shoes.
(All of us in my country, we pray. All of us shine shoes.)

And to rocks where my hunger engraved a message:
This rock is really rain rolling under my eyelids, it’s lightning.
And I bow down to a house whose soil I carried with me
when I was lost. These all are my homeland. Not Damascus.