New Year, don't come to our homes, for we are wanderers from a ghost-world, denied by man. Night flees from us, fate has deserted us We live as wandering spirits with no memory no dreams, no longings, no hopes. The horizons of our eyes have grown ashen the gray of a still lake, like our silent brows, pulseless, heatless, denuded of poetry. We live not knowing life. *** New Year, move on. There is the path to lead your footsteps. Ours are veins of hard reed, and we know not of sadness. We wish to be dead, and refused by the graves. We wish to write history by the years If only we knew what it is to be bound to a place If only snow could bring us winter to wrap our faces in darkness If only memory, or hope, or regret could one day block our country from its path If only we feared madness If only our lives could be disturbed by travel or shock, or the sadness of an impossible love. If only we could die like other people. ------------ Translated from the Arabic by Rebecca Carol Johnson