Like reflections of a wedding
The evergreen hurried toward its branches, groaning until the last wound in its body You take a thread to sketch the air so the sparrows don't fall.
A body pendulates between a woman of mutes and a woman overcrowded by mistakes so pure and clear it can draw, love in the stone of mountain roads,
it cheats the language.
The bush has to twist and turn and fall passionately in love.
Alone, the movement of the seeds quivers like a heart.

BASSAM K FRANGIEH

is Professor of Arabic at Yale University, USA, and au thor of several books, including Alien atien and fhr Palestinian Novel (Arabic). He has translated leading Arab Poets and novelists into English.