The old word is dead.
The old books are dead.
Our speech with holes like worn-out shoes is dead.
Dead is the mind that led to
Our poetry has gone sour.
Women's hair, nights, curtains and
Have gone sour.
Everything has gone
My grieved country,
In a
You changed me from a poet who wrote love
To a poet who writes with a
What we feel is beyond words:
We should be ashamed of our
Stirred by Oriental bombast,
By boastful swaggering that never killed a fly,
By the fiddle and the drum,
We went to war,
And
Our shouting is louder than our actions,
Our swords are taller than us,
This is our
In
We wear the cape of
But our souls live in the stone
You dont win a
With a reed and a
Our
Cost us fifty thousand new
Dont curse
If it abandons you,
Dont curse circumstances,
God gives victory to whom He
God is not a blacksmith to beat
It's painful to listen to the news in the
It's painful to listen to the barking of
Our enemies did not cross our
They crept through our weaknesses like
Five thousand
Growing
In our caves.
Our currency is unknown,
Our eyes are a haven for flies.
Friends,
Smash the doors,
Wash your brains,
Wash your clothes.
Friends,
Read a book,
Write a book,
Grow words, pomegranates and grapes,
Sail to the country of fog and snow.
Nobody knows you exist in caves.
People take you for a breed of
We are a thick-skinned
With empty souls.
We spend our days practicing witchcraft,
Playing chess and sleeping.
Are we the 'Nation by which God blessed
Our desert oil could have
Daggers of flame and fire.
We're a disgrace to our noble ancestors:
We let our oil flow through the toes of
We run wildly through the
Dragging people with ropes,
Smashing windows and locks.
We praise like frogs,
Turn midgets into heroes,
And heroes into scum:
We never stop and think.
In
We crouch idly,
Write poems,
Proverbs,
Beg God for
Over our
If i knew I'd come to no harm,
And could see the Sultan,
This is what i would say:'Sultan,
Your wild dogs have torn my
Your spies hound
Their eyes hound
Their noses hound
Their feet hound
They hound me like
Interrogate my
And take down the name of my friends.
Sultan,
When I came close to your wallsand talked about my pains,
Your soldiers beat me with their boots,
Forced me to eat my shoes.
Sultan,
You lost two wars,
Sultan,
Half of our people are without tongues,
What's the use of a poeple without tongues?
Half of our
Are trapped like ants and
Between walls.'If i knew I'd come to no harmI'd tell him:'You lost two
You lost touch with
If we hadn't buried our
If we hadn't ripped its young body with
If it had stayed in our
The dogs wouldn't have savaged our
We do not want an angry
To plough the
To blow up
To blow up our thoughts.
We want a new
That does not forgive
That does not bend.
We want a generation of
Arab children,
Corn ears of the future,
You will break our chains,
Kill the opium in our heads,
Kill the illusions.
Arab children,
Don't read about our suffocated generation,
We are a hopeless case.
We are as worthless as a water-melon rind.
Dont read about us,
Dont ape us,
Dont accept us,
Dont accept our ideas,
We are a nation of crooks and jugglers.
Arab children,
Spring rain,
Corn ears of the future,
You are the
That will overcome defeat.
