1我的声音响起,这一次,从大马士革rings out from the house of my mother and father In Sham. The geography of my body changes. The cells of my blood become green. My alphabet is green. In Sham. A new mouth emerges for my mouth A new voice emerges for my voice And my fingers Become a tribe 2 I return to Damascus Riding on the backs of clouds Riding the two most beautiful horses in the world The horse of passion. The horse of poetry. I return after sixty years To search for my umbilical cord, For the Damascene barber who circumcised me, For the midwife who tossed me in the basin under the bed And received a gold lira from my father, She left our house On that day in March of 1923 Her hands stained with the blood of the poem? 3 I return to the womb in which I was formed . . . To the first book I read in it . . . To the first woman who taught me The geography of love . . . And the geography of women . . . 4 I return After my limbs have been strewn across all the continents And my cough has been scattered in all the hotels After my mother?s sheets scented with laurel soap I have found no other bed to sleep on . . . And after the ?bride? of oil and thyme That she would roll up for me No longer does any other 'bride' in the world please me And after the quince jam she would make with her own hands I am no longer enthusiastic about breakfast in the morning And after the blackberry drink that she would make No other wine intoxicates me . . . 5 I enter the courtyard of the Umayyad Mosque And greet everyone in it Corner to . . . corner Tile to . . . tile Dove to . . . dove I wander in the gardens of Kufi script And pluck beautiful flowers of God?s words And hear with my eye the voice of the mosaics And the music of agate prayer beads A state of revelation and rapture overtakes me, So I climb the steps of the first minaret that encounters me Calling: ?Come to the jasmine? ?Come to the jasmine? 6 Returning to you Stained by the rains of my longing Returning to fill my pockets With nuts, green plums, and green almonds Returning to my oyster shell Returning to my birth bed For the fountains of Versailles Are no compensation for the Fountain Café And Les Halles in Paris Is no compensation for the Friday market And Buckingham Palace in London Is no compensation for Azem Palace And the pigeons of San Marco in Venice Are no more blessed than the doves in the Umayyad Mosque And Napoleon?s tomb in Les Invalides Is no more glorious than the tomb of Salah al-Din Al-Ayyubi? 7 I wander in the narrow alleys of Damascus. Behind the windows, honeyed eyes awake And greet me . . . The stars wear their gold bracelets And greet me And the pigeons alight from their towers And greet me And the clean Shami cats come out Who were born with us . . . Grew up with us . . . And married with us . . . To greet me . . . 8 I immerse myself in the Buzurriya Souq Set a sail in a cloud of spices Clouds of cloves And cinnamon . . . And camomile . . . I perform ablutions in rose water once. And in the water of passion many times . . . And I forget?while in the Souq al-`Attarine? All the concoctions of Nina Ricci . . . And Coco Chanel . . . What are you doing to me Damascus? How have you changed my culture? My aesthetic taste? For I have been made to forget the ringing of cups of licorice The piano concerto of Rachmaninoff . . . How do the gardens of Sham transform me? For I have become the first conductor in the world That leads an orchestra from a willow tree!! 9 I have come to you . . . From the history of the Damascene rose That condenses the history of perfume . . . From the memory of al-Mutanabbi That condenses the history of poetry . . . I have come to you . . . From the blossoms of bitter orange . . . And the dahlia . . . And the narcissus . . . And the 'nice boy' . . . That first taught me drawing . . . I have come to you . . . From the laughter of Shami women That first taught me music . . . And the beginning of adolesence From the spouts of our alley That first taught me crying And from my mother?s prayer rug That first taught me The path to God . . . 10 I open the drawers of memory One . . . then another I remember my father . . . Coming out of his workshop on Mu?awiya Alley I remember the horse-drawn carts . . . And the sellers of prickly pears . . . And the cafés of al-Rubwa That nearly?after five flasks of `araq? Fall into the river I remember the colored towels As they dance on the door of Hammam al-Khayyatin As if they were celebrating their national holiday. I remember the Da