Poets draw nature before it prefigures itself and they invent and build a hut abandoned by a gang of thugs. *** They sing sometimes and they form a road so water can take the shape of a river. They instill in mud the memory of the trees. A bird discovers its colors in the phrases of a poem, and picks its rare name. *** When poets leave sleep behind the young thugs begin their rampage. They romp a little and they throng as if nature is ambushing them. They storm and they thunder. And their limbs begin to thin as if the seasons were all about to start, as if childhood selected its shapes suddenly, and eyes gaze only at the perseverance of nature. *** And the young thugs commit their sins sip by sip the way poems clash against the triumph of time. Creatures offer gifts and take their tempting shapes as if a tongue made creation. And people, still startled by their inception, face the thin ice adorning their mirrors to see what the poets have done to our feeble dreams. *** Poetry maligns speech and the young thugs commit forgivable sins the way an infant scratches a breast then weeps to it the way a text breaks its intentions. Then the apple of love descends enamoring a woman with a lost lover, the way the wolf divulges the myth of the bloody shirt and the innocent brothers confess their crime and nature forgives a careless creator then praises him. ______________ Translated by Khaled Mattawa