The Counterfeit Stones

I, my country, strip away each day a fault
in which others take pride, and cast it on the road...
I break my self each day, and cast
from it the stones that are not mine onto the roads
of the people — and every man with a stone chooses his stone!!
Heaps and domes of these stones
take shelter in everyone who lives upon your soil...
O my country!

If only all had some of my hardness,
they would break their selves and cast some
of these counterfeit stones upon the road... and not
keep them inside their sham souls...

If only our poets, who play the tunes of others
upon their strings, had a grain of this hardness,
then poetry among us would be alive, renewing itself and growing
like the fresh young plant on Lebanon's brow in the days of spring.

If only our men of letters, leaning on the staff
of the past, had a handful of this hardness, then our literature would be
a brook flowing on, with new shadows
reflected upon it every day!!

If only our women had a breath of this hardness,
the fashions would not tyrannize over them as the giant
tyrannizes over dwarfs and beggars...

If only our young people had a glimmer of this hardness,
then we would be living in surroundings of iron... not
among dead men who claim to be alive, and who take from
every statue a stone to slip into their
profligate selves!!!

And last, but not least...
if only this handful of our deputies had something of
my hardness: they would break their selves and fling
their counterfeit stones... far out into the sea,
and give rest, and find rest!!!
“If only” — and how galling a word it is...
one that never comes true!!...