1. Homeland of stars: I am here
Look, do you remember who I am?

2. You glimpsed in the distant past
A merry, impetuous lad?

3. Jadlan playing in your fields
Like a murmuring breeze

4. Owned yet owning his playground
And unlike the unpossessed!

5. Climbing trees not out of boredom
Feeling, lacking no joy

6. And returning with branches to make
Swords or spears for fun

7. And wading in winter mud
Joyous, auspicious

8. Fearing not the evil of eyes
Nor dreading gossip

9. And how often you wished he’d say
“He’s naughty,” people would tell

10. ***
***

11. I’m that boy whose
World was here!

12. I’m a raindrop of your waters
That overflowed brooks from the springhead

13. I’m a speck of your soil
That stirred processions from Mina

14. I’m a nightingale of your birds
That sang your glory and thrived

15. Imbibing from your valleys
Vivacity and cheer for life

16. How often my soul embraced your hills
And clapped in the valley?

17. To the cedar mocking the winds
And time and demise

18. To the sea where your children spread
Civilization and urbanity

19. To the night praying in you
To the dawn making call to prayer in you

20. To the sun slowing in farewell
Of your lands, lest it sadden them

21. To the moon in April whose kohl
Adorned the eyes with radiance

22. Melting into the gaze of the bubbly wine
A subtle, tender sorcery

23. To the field where your poetry sprung
Anemones or lilies

24. To the grass heavy with dew
To the branch heavy with fruit

25. Beauty lived homeless
On earth seeking refuge

26. Until you were revealed and it cast
Its load and settled

27. And art reviewed the mountains
But you were the finest

28. God has in you a secret, O
Lebanon, unrevealed to us

29. They claimed your gloom...If only
They ascribed the possible to me

30. For one may forget those who wronged
And maligned, and who did good

31. And play, and beauty, and the poignant melody,
and song

32. And the bitterness of humiliating poverty,
Even the pleasures of wealth

33. But however much one wanders
Never will one forget the homeland