Sonnet V

I touch you as a lonely violin touches the suburbs of the faraway place patiently the river asks for its share of the drizzle and, bit by bit, a tomorrow passing in poems approaches so I carry faraway's land and it carries me on travel's road On a mare made of your virtues, my soul weaves a natural sky made of your shadows, one chrysalis at a time. I am the son of what you do in the earth, son of my wounds that have lit up the pomegranate blossoms in your closed-up gardens Out of jasmine the night's blood streams white. Your perfume, my weakness and your secret, follows me like a snakebite. And your hair is a tent of wind autumn in color. I walk along with speech to the last of the words a bedouin told a pair of doves I palpate you as a violin palpates the silk of the faraway time and around me and you sprouts the grass of an ancient place—anew Translated By: Fady Joudah