Verse

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.