Sonnet V by Mahmoud Darwish

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)