the star will not leave the hills of Galilee, until the light rises and the Child is born...

So peal, O bells of the Nativity!!

Peal in every dome of the domes of the churches, and carry in your echoes the echoes of the far-off generations, from the night of Galilee, the night the star was nailed fast, above the hill... over the grotto...

And tonight the sky lays her firstborn son in the arms of a woman

Muhammad

of the people, in a grotto among the mountains of my country...

...Said a grain of sand to a grain of sand: It is as though I have drunk my fill, O neighbor!! No longer do I feel the burning of the eternal thirst in the dryness of my heart. And here upon this desert I am like the shimmer of water in the springs of Paradise! And this desert, it seems, is no longer mirage and sands, nor abjection and begging!

Sister, the sky is stirring within me, and after this long age the earth can no longer contain me. And a dry stone said to a stone like itself, in the open courts of the Kaaba: My ribs seem to be splitting, and a quaking all but wrenches me out of this ground.

I hold myself fast to myself, but I am coming loose, as though I were crumbling, grain by grain, into the dust! And Abd al-Muttalib bound me yesterday with iron... Why then have my ribs gone soft within the iron?!

And the light rises over the plain of Mecca — and behold, every grain of sand is a violet, and the stones of the Kaaba are crumbled dust.

...And in the desert, a mighty prophet...

Love Concealed

Fouad Suleiman

Do not deny it — I have known what you conceal;

I see love: its features have spread abroad;

and in the gloom of the bashful dream

you hid it from me, while doubt was in me;

I feel it — do not pretend that it —

You love me... whence, were it not for love,

in the glance of the eye is the ray of certainty;

in the flutter of your lashes and the radiance of your brow;

a care concealed by a composed modesty;

by God, I did not believe what you keep hidden;

it lies still in your breast, a buried secret —

this sweet dew and this tenderness??

Who set the melody fluttering in your ear,

and the star of the darkness in your chamber,

and the locks of perfume upon your bed?

You love me — this is the gloom of love

in your mournful face,

and your suspect silence,

and your sorrowful step.

I feel it in everything you conceal:

in your distracted eyelid,

and your wasted body,

and your sorrowful step.

What is upon your lips? Oh, their sweetness!!

Leave it to me... oh, its sweetness in my mouth;

leave it to me alone, in its purity —

I see upon it the eyes of the thirsty;

rose and jasmine are twined together in it;

I am the blaze, and mankind is water and clay.

The Tragedy

Fouad Suleiman

What have you done, "Mayy"?... said to her the fearful emptiness that was left to her, wrapping her round... They were alone, "she" and "the emptiness." I snatched you from your mother's womb to squeeze out the fruits of your youth and to shake the tree of your riper years, till not a leaf or a fruit remained... I filled your house with glory and fame, with those who came to you from every quarter. I left the men — poets and men of letters — at your feet, Mayy, balls rolling about the courtyard of the house... I bound velvet and silk upon your head, and bound a black ribbon upon your heart... Greater than all you ever sang, Mayy, is a song over a child's cradle that you never sang — and how