the tunnels of the earth, from the underground vaults, for their consciences and their hearts and their faces have gone black, and pains have furrowed their brows.

Bring them back, O sea — your waves, which visit every shore, know that they are only digging their own graves as they dig for the caves of emerald and ruby. Your waves have seen them on all the shores of the earth, emaciated, their forearms yellowed, the black forests devouring them. The slaves of night hunt them down, sucked dry by pains and weariness... care drives them from door to door, and behind every door they imagine they will find it — that marvelous tale, that marvelous lie among your lies, O sea.

Bring them back, O sea, to the sunlight in their country... to the fields of flowers in their villages... to the clear springs where they may drink deep of health and well-being... to the vineyards they deserted, so that the blessings and the bounties deserted them. To the houses they built on the hills and the slopes, and then went away... To their land, O sea, bring them back, for in their land are the spellbound treasures. In their land are emerald and ruby and carnelian and coral and grains of gold, and all the blessings of heaven are in their land.

And on your way back to them, tell them that you lied to them. And beg their forgiveness, O sea...

Tell them that the caves you told them of are caves of serpents and vipers, spellbound by jinn and demons, with pools of blood in them and pools of flame.

And set, O sea, between yourself and those who still venture their youth here, chasing the tale — set between you and them a wall of iron, that no boat may cross it after this day, striking out into the deep in the name of the spellbound treasures...

When will my beloved return? When will my brother return... when... when.

No mother has ever choked with grief as the mothers of my country's young men have choked, casting them onto the palm of the demons, onto the waves, beyond the sun, upon the seven seas, where no eye can reach.

O Lord. O Lord. Who taught the people of this land the letters of that tale, so that in one hour of time it became a tragedy dyed with blood and tears, a long tragedy of pains with no beginning and no end... and never ending...

Nay — its beginning is here, on these shores, and its end is there, in 'the caves of emerald and ruby.' Would that it had remained in the tales, a legend for the mountain youth to while away the hours with, by the hearth-fires in the snows, and for the shepherds of the plains to sing behind their flocks in the pastures.

But in the tales it is a marvelous lie, told once by the sea to sailors from here — a deep, great lie among the lies of this deep, great sea!

Would that the first Lebanese plank that pushed into the sea had shattered in the sea's bosom, in the wind and the waves, and its waters had never heard the creaking of her ribs!

Would that your road, O sea, had never lain before us — for we built upon your roads palaces with gilded domes, and your waves swallowed our palaces and our huts...

And nothing is left to us but these far horizons, at which we gaze, hoping there may be in them a boat coming back to us with one returned from the caves of emerald and rubies.

Bring them back, O sea — bring them back from this long, bitter exile. Bring them back from the trackless forests, for their skins have dried from the blaze of heat and the sting of cold