Come, Let Us Settle Accounts

On the occasion of his approaching return to his mother country, Mr. Salim Mufawwaj, one of our readers in Argentina, sent us these tender verses, which we publish for him with our heartfelt wishes to see him among us in Lebanon with the coming of August...

What did you take and what did you give, America?
Give me the tale, with the tears of a wasting heart.
Was ever a youth more wretched, more worn than I?
What shall I say tomorrow when I meet them,
Where is the gold, Salim — where did you leave it?
Where is tender youth — where is it buried?
I squandered my years pursuing a great prize;
This is the book of a lifetime, its chapters folding shut.

In August, O Lebanon, was our farewell;
My grief — when the companions return to the home ground

In a quarter of a century, if you but knew my state,
And you robbed me of my freshness and my youth,
I would never have accepted parting from my loved ones,
In my village, watching for my homecoming,
Do you visit your people clutching a handful of dust?
So I answered, regrets brimming within me:
Do not ask me where my youth was lost...
And I in my turn have folded my book shut.

Will our meeting, I wonder, be in August?
That you should not see me among the companions.

Salim Mufawwaj
Argentina