To Farid Al Atrash

I listened to your songs each stormy day
and understood that great sadness
though I was never with you
in Cairo.
And in my poems I caught your grief that emitted
slowly
from the veins of those chords that hungered and ached
at once
and when you were alone
on the road that goes from Egypt to Lebanon
and couldn’t stop by your lofty house
on the Druze mountain
or you’d be accused of treason.

Translation by Karen Alkalay-Gut

Previously published in the Jerusalem Review