Friends weave their new rags in a morning with a missing sun. Their bodies convulse, and their fingers are caught in a fever of work. They spin language with the excitement of magicians and the confidence of artisans. They offer wool to summer, and ice to winter. *** Friends east of the water, they work well in solitude. *** I stand on the shore. I watch their silhouettes outline the horizon. I send them books in bottles that expunge my words. and they are exceedingly gentle with them. They run on a bridge with flaming feet and there they climb burdened with scrolls, a bridge that praises geography and disparages history and vigilantly watches against the written word. They hold texts under their arms and descend like goats decorating the road. I embrace them. They cross through terror. Their memories are of blood, and their fingers, fastened to glass shards, are soiled with hacked hearts. We crash in the midst of love and death like waves churning salt and luring vessels. Naked bodies of young men, where a shirt is never woven for summer, and no feast is prepared for winter. The lonesome friends are there. __________________ Translated by Khaled Mattawa