A Passage from the Poem in Which the Poet Atef Karam Mourned His Friend Fouad Suleiman

I crawled to your resting place, burning and weeping —
had I done you justice, I would have visited you barefoot,
rubbing my face in the dust and the pebbles,
beating my cheeks until the tears destroy what adorns me,
kissing the tips of the boughs and their shade,
hoping something of the sweetness of your days remains in them...

For you were my companion in song and in wasting pain —
alas for me, the mourner, and alas for me, the announcer of death!!
You walked at my side for twenty years, and here I am,
following my dreams to the grave and folding up my sail.
Against pain you were the healer of my solace —
who is left me now, when you have become my sorrow and my disease?
Shall I weep? For whom shall I weep? Can the news be true?
Who is there for my longing, O Fouad, and who for me?

And who for the downy orphans in the freshness of childhood,
and for the fragrant pen that watered the bright blooms?
What day did not drink from you a breath of sweetness,
and what brow was not held high because of you?!

Companion of my youth, O heartbeat of my breast,
with which I buried a melody of my own blood —
O rose in our quarter breathing out perfume,
in you we lost the fragrance that was precious —
O inspirer in my homeland, creator of beauty's ornaments,
the crests of morning wept for you, O my country!!!

Companion of my youth, ask the Maker of the universe for one waking,
and you will hear my call in the valley of the graves.
I have grieved until my very limbs became part of you —
do you hear me chanting my elegy over you?
As if within your closed eyes were the sight of a sleepless watcher
who communes with you waking and keeps guard over you sleeping.

O Tammuz, grant me from your struggle one surge
to burst open my sorrows and set my wounds ablaze,
and water my blood with the bitterness of torment — for I
feel, at your resting place, that my weeping is sweet...

I love you this day; I adore you as a rebel
shattering hearts and bloodying eyes,
weaving out of my spirit a wonder upon your name...
ah, you the elegized, and you the elegist!!!

Do you leave me, after you, any opening for poetry,
you who have orphaned the rhymes among us?
For poetry, O Tammuz, after you brings no succor,
nor is company, O Tammuz, after you any longer sweet...

I beg you, do not reproach me if the eye runs dry,
its thirsting sea turned back parched —
for today you have held a funeral for poetry
and turned the strings of song into tragedies.
You have filled the quarters of the horizon with grief — can we,
after what has stricken us, still take shelter beneath the heights?

Your life? Or a lifetime at which the forenoon chokes,
renewing melodies and building meanings?

I have buried you in my mind, a wingèd phantom
that colors my inspiration and enriches my fancy.

And the loveliest thing in life is a secret you love,
whose communing stays sweet though it has become the past.