rain
Your eyes are two palm tree forests in early light, |
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Or two balconies from which the moonlight recedes |
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When they smile, your eyes, the vines put forth their leaves, |
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And lights dance . . . like moons in a river |
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Rippled by the blade of an oar at break of day; |
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As if stars were throbbing in the depths of them . . . |
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And they drown in a mist of sorrow translucent |
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Like the sea stroked by the hand of nightfall; |
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The warmth of winter is in it, the shudder of autumn, |
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And death and birth, darkness and light; |
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A sobbing flares up to tremble in my soul |
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And a savage elation embracing the sky, |
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Frenzy of a child frightened by the moon. |
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It is as if archways of mist drank the clouds |
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And drop by drop dissolved in the rain . . . |
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As if children snickered in the vineyard bowers, |
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The song of the rain |
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Rippled the silence of birds in the trees . . . |
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Drop, drop, the rain |
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Drip |
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Dropthe rain |
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Evening yawned, from low clouds |
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Heavy tears are streaming still. |
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It is as if a child before sleep were rambling on |
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About his mother (a year ago he went to wake her, did not find her, |
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Then was told, for he kept on asking, |
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"After tomorrow, she'll come back again . . . |
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That she must come back again, |
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Yet his playmates whisper that she is there |
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In the hillside, sleeping her death for ever, |
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Eating the earth around her, drinking the rain; |
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As if a forlorn fisherman gathering nets |
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Cursed the waters and fate |
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And scattered a song at moonset, |
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Drip, drop, the rain |
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Drip, drop, the rain |
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Do you know what sorrow the rain can inspire? |
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Do you know how gutters weep when it pours down? |
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Do you know how lost a solitary person feels in the rain? |
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Endless, like spilt blood, like hungry people, like love, |
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Like children, like the dead, endless the rain. |
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Your two eyes take me wandering with the rain, |
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Lightning's from across the Gulf sweep the shores of Iraq |
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With stars and shells, |
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As if a dawn were about to break from them, But night pulls over them a coverlet of blood. I cry out to the Gulf: "O Gulf, |
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Giver of pearls, shells and death!" |
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And the echo replies, |
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As if lamenting: |
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"O Gulf, |
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Giver of shells and death . |
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I can almost hear Iraq husbanding the thunder, |
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Storing lightning in the mountains and plains, |
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So that if the seal were broken by men |
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The winds would leave in the valley not a trace of Thamud. |
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I can almost hear the palmtrees drinking the rain, |
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Hear the villages moaning and emigrants |
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With oar and sail fighting the Gulf |
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Winds of storm and thunder, singing |
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"Rain . . . rain . . . |
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Drip, drop, the rain . . . |
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And there is hunger in Iraq, |
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The harvest time scatters the grain in-it, |
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That crows and locusts may gobble their fill, |
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Granaries and stones grind on and on, |
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Mills turn in the fields, with them men turning . . . |
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Drip, drop, the rain . . . |
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Drip |
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Drop |
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When came the night for leaving, how many tears we shed, |
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We made the rain a pretext, not wishing to be blamed |
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Drip, drop, the rain |
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Drip, drop, the rain |
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Since we had been children, the sky |
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Would be clouded in wintertime, |
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And down would pour the rain, |
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And every year when earth turned green the hunger struck us. |
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Not a year has passed without hunger in Iraq. |
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Rain . . . |
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Drip, drop, the rain . . . |
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Drip, drop . . . |
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In every drop of rain |
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A red or yellow color buds from the seeds of flowers. |
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Every tear wept by the hungry and naked people |
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And every spilt drop of slaves' blood |
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Is a smile aimed at a new dawn, |
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A nipple turning rosy in an infant's lips |
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In the young world of tomorrow, bringer of life. |
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Drip..... |
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Drop..... the rain . . .In the rain. |
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Iraq will blossom one day ' |
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I cry out to the Gulf: "O Gulf, |
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Giver of pearls, shells and death!" |
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The echo replies |
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As if lamenting: |
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'O Gulf, |
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Giver of shells and death." |
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And across the sands from among its lavish gifts |
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The Gulf scatters fuming froth and shells |
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And the skeletons of miserable drowned emigrants |
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Who drank death forever |
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From the depths of the Gulf, from the ground of its silence, |
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And in Iraq a thousand serpents drink the nectar |
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From a flower the Euphrates has nourished with dew. |
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I hear the echo |
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Ringing in the Gulf: |
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"Rain . . . |
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Drip, drop, the rain . . . |
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Drip, drop." |
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In every drop of rain |
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A red or yellow color buds from the seeds of flowers. |
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Every tear wept by the hungry and naked people |
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And every spilt drop of slaves' blood |
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Is a smile aimed at a new dawn, |
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A nipple turning rosy in an infant's lips |
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In the young world of tomorrow, bringer of life. |
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And still the rain pours down. |