Adonis: New Testament

He doesn't speak this language.
He doesn't know the voices of the wastes.
A soothsayer in stony sleep
he is burdened with distant languages.

Here he comes from under the ruins
in the climate of new words,

offering his poems to grieving winds
unpolished but bewitching like brass.

He is a language glistening between the masts
the knight of strange words.



Translated from Arabic by Adnan Hayda