I
 
 For the fifth year you come to us
 lugging a burlap sack on your back, barefoot,
 on your face the sadness of heavens
 and the pain of Hussein.
 We’ll receive you at every airport
 with flower bouquets,
 and drink -- to your health -- rivers of wine.
 We’ll sing
 and recite insincere poems in your presence,
 and you’ll get used to us
 and we to you.
 
 II
 
 We ask you to spend here your summer vacation,
 like a tourist,
 and we’ll offer you a royal suite
 we’ve prepared -- for you.
 You may enjoy the night and the neon lights
 and the rock and roll and the porno and the jazz --
 here we know of no grief, nor the ones who grieve.
 You’ll find in my country all that pleases you,
 furnished flats for lovers,
 liquor for drinkers,
 and harem for the caliph.
 Why are you so broken-winged?
 Sad-faced guest,
 we have water streams and gross and fair maidens --
 why are you so diffident?
 We’ll make you forget Palestine
 and from your eyes pluck the tree of tears,
 and from the Qur’an erase the verses,
 the Compassionate and the Conquest,
 and we’ll assassinate Jesus Christ and grant you an Arab passport
 that has no exit visa.
 
 III
 
 Fifth year
 sixth
 seventh
 eighth
 ninth
 tenth year
 what do the years count for?
 All our grand cities, from the Euphrates to the Nile,
 are bereft of memory, of remembrance.
 We’ve forgotten the men lost in the Sinai
 and our dead are dead.
 What do the years count for?
 We’ve prepared wreaths and the scarfs
 and composed all the speeches
 and carved, a week before you arrive,
 the marble of the tombstones.
 O Orient that feeds on the paper of communiqués
 and walks -- like a lamb -- behind all banners.
 O Orient that writes the names of its fallen men
 on the faces of mirrors on the waists of belly dancers --
 what do the years count for?
 what do the years count for?
 
 —Translated by Sharif Elmusa