tree is broken?

And Mother... I remember, among the things I remember, that we had a green arbor... with red clusters in it... and above it a moon that seemed to be ours alone in the whole village...

We would eat of the clusters... and live with the moon...

But the moon is not here, Mother... nor the red vine...

— It withered, light of my eyes... it withered. A worm gnawed its roots, and it died. And we built this loft up against the face of the moon; so he is above the loft, and we do not see him.

— Did the moon die, Mother, with the arbor?

— No, he did not die; but he is no longer ours alone in the village...

... How cruel is fate, that it pounces upon this family, robs it of its happiness, and deprives the wife and the happy fledglings of a tenderness beyond all tenderness.

The Nativity / Muhammad

Fouad Suleiman

...The star in the East will not set... as though it had been nailed fast, above the hill in Galilee, over the grotto...

...O what a night that was!!... and the sky in it was roads upon roads: on every road a color, and on every road a perfume...

...O the sky!! It comes down in majesty and reverence, to embrace the earth in her first joy!...

That is a night in which

The Funeral of the Roses

A dream that slipped away from my morning,

and a sorrow that seeps into my wounds.

The firstborn of the roses, its tender buds,

walk with broken wing.

In your fragrance there is a funeral,

sister of the lilies and the daisies.

And the night after you is pensive,

and the light after you is in lament.

The roses walk in mourning,

and the weddings of the fair are choked.

Morning folded its wing

the day you fell with the morning...

I — O love of the swaying splendor

and the indulgent hopes —

I, the day sorrow plucked you,

lock by lock, dying with the winds,

wrapped your fragrance up: in my blood

the memory of youth and of play,

when spring was my pillow

and the dew of spring lay on my sash...

Sleep — I feel you as an intoxication

that floated over my cup and my wine,

as though your fragrance in my blood

lives on a hope within reach.

Fouad Suleiman