The Splendor of the Hills

• "Zahw al-Ruba" (The Splendor of the Hills) is a diwan of poetry published in Damascus by the poet Mikhail Khalil Allahwerdi.

The diwan is elegantly printed and runs to 333 pages. The first 175 pages are devoted to poems composed by the poet Mikhail Allahwerdi on patriotic, social, and gnomic themes; the remainder of the book is poetic craftsmanship — the fivefold, split, or fourfold elaboration of certain well-known verses. Here is a sample of his fivefold elaboration on the two famous lines of al-Sharif al-Radi:

The Heart Turned Back

Ask not how it fares with their neighbor,
how often he roamed, mad with longing, about their dwelling,
for the heart still beats at their remembrance —
"And indeed I stood upon their abodes,
their ruins plundered by the hand of decay."

I poured out my tears upon the hills, and there sprouted
their flowers; and their days were folded away,
and I went on like a wretched orphan girl —
"And my eye turned back; and when the ruins vanished
from my sight, the heart turned back."