HUSSEIN AMRI

THE SONG

OF THE HILLS

WITH PHOTOS FROM

AHMAD ZAGMOURI

The songs of the hills,

the beds the kinfolk prepared for the

trees.

A shroud that binds the soil,

this is an eternal yard

for the vines in their dance,

for an olive branch swaying

like the hand of an Imam.

The poems of stones

unsettle the concrete and

go ignored by the pines.

The trespassers, with their cypress,

will not hear the chant of the stone walls.

They will not understand this embrace

of stone against stone,

or from where this tune rises.

How does the hillside rise with the story

without slipping away?

The sun will burn the pines

when it longs for the harvest,

and the valley will swallow

the bricks of the transient.

For the haunted will never learn to dance,

and stones do not teach their tongue

except to those who are at home.

THE SONG

OF THE HILLS

The songs of the hills,

the beds the kinfolk prepared for the

trees.

A shroud that binds the soil,

this is an eternal yard

for the vines in their dance,

for an olive branch swaying

like the hand of an Imam.

The poems of stones

unsettle the concrete and

go ignored by the pines.

The trespassers, with their cypress,

will not hear the chant of the stone walls.

They will not understand this embrace

of stone against stone,

or from where this tune rises.

How does the hillside rise with the story

without slipping away?

The sun will burn the pines

when it longs for the harvest,

and the valley will swallow

the bricks of the transient.

For the haunted will never learn to dance,

and stones do not teach their tongue

except to those who are at home.

PALESTINE IS EVERYWHERE

TBA21

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