1. I gathered, though bread was scarce in my abode
And years around me, and my soul in haze

2. I drank the water fresh and sweet
As though I'd tasted naught but mirage all my days

3. A bafflement, none other can compare
Save a boat in stormy seas and towering waves

4. No sickness plagues me, just a man am I
Who's not in native land or with his mates

5. Years passed, succeeding each the one before
My land laughed, while I grieved in solitude

6. Whene'er I fostered in myself some hope
Did life extend its fist to seize and snatch away

7. The sweet illusions slipped from me
When from my hands did youth itself depart

8. No more's inspiration's door ajar for me
Or do my dreams walk in my footsteps' prints

9. I crave wine, and my cup's held in my grip
While I can feel my soul from robes slip

10. Oh friends, break your vessels in disdain
For in my world no wine for pouring remains

11. For me poetry's udder's dried up and gone
Though long it lived on Marri and cavil and fray

12. You ask who am I? I hail, like the sun, from the east
Steel is the language my tongue spoke yesterday

13. No ardor survives in a world full of qualms and unease
I make no complaint if others their sorrows relay

14. For exile of bodies cannot estrangement imply
I'm like the vine, if abroad it did not stray

15. No wine for people's cellars would thereby
I'm like the lily, if it did not wander

16. No garland its flower would crown, atop the array
I stand in New York in body, while my soul

17. Dwells in the east, on those plateaus far away
In smile of dawn, in silence of gloaming

18. In autumn's grief, in August's dismay
I am, in Ghouta, a bud and a dew

19. I am, in Lebanon, a whisper and ardour in play
Lord, grant me return to my country

20. And let others gain reward in their own homeland to stay
You who come from that zeal, O youth

21. Harbingers of good, emblems for youth under way
How we trundled and how you trundled for wishes

22. And you wept and we wept in tribulations' affray
In a struggle we shared, or an ordeal or distress

23. And we met in discourse or perusing essays
You knew and we knew, like yourselves

24. That right is for victor, however bloodied the fray
Each land that its people neglect

25. Becomes one for pillage and plunder and prey
But in your faces, I espy

26. A glow on those hills that does flood o'er the way
And specters of years gone before I behold

27. In struggle, resistance, stand, and foray
And figures of an era, refulgent, arising

28. Like the sun, from beyond the veil's curtained doorway
Would that it hastens, so I see it still

29. Before to dust in the dust I decay