Sonnet V

I touch you as a lonely violin touches the suburbs of the faraway place

patiently the river asks for its share of the drizzle

and, bit by bit, a tomorrow passing in poems approaches

so I carry faraway’s land and it carries me on travel’s road

On a mare made of your virtues, my soul weaves

a natural sky made of your shadows, one chrysalis at a time.

I am the son of what you do in the earth, son of my wounds

that have lit up the pomegranate blossoms in your closed-up gardens

Out of jasmine the night’s blood streams white. Your perfume,

my weakness and your secret, follows me like a snakebite. And your hair

is a tent of wind autumn in color. I walk along with speech

to the last of the words a bedouin told a pair of doves

I palpate you as a violin palpates the silk of the faraway time

and around me and you sprouts the grass of an ancient place - 

anew

Mahmoud Darwish

in, The Butterfly’s Burden