الأطفالُ يولدونَ وعمرُهم ألفُ عام

In Palestine...

Children are born with a thousand years of age,

carrying on their backs bags of stones,

and in their eyes are oceans of tears that never dry.

In Palestine...

Flowers bloom from amidst the rubble,

and mothers nurse nostalgia instead of milk,

writing the names of their martyrs on loaves of bread.

Palestine...

Is not an old map hung by nations on the walls.

Nor is it a cold news bulletin passing like an arrow before the eyes of the oblivious.

It is a heart that beats with pain every time the world smiles coldly. It is a slaughtered anthem searching for a throat to sing.

A homeland imprisoned behind the bars of long silence.

In Palestine...

The sky rains only tears, and the sun rises shyly from the destruction of homes.

The moon stumbles over the sighs of mothers.

In Palestine...

They are born under gunfire.

They dream of loaves of freedom dipped in human dignity.

Palestine...

Whenever a child falls from your hands,

A poem falls from my notebook,

And a flower breaks in my gardens.

We will continue to preserve your name as a mother preserves her newborn's tears, and we will write about you until the ink tires,

And the poems sleep on the pillow of the long-awaited peace.

The children are small, having descended from a torn cloud,

Carrying in their eyes the map of the homeland, and in their hearts a volcano of rejection.

Their shoulders are small, but they carry mountains...

And in their palms is the henna from the tears of mothers, not from the weddings of joy.

The wind preserves the names of the martyrs as a mother preserves her child's laughter,

And the minarets cry and mourn,

And the earth nurses its roots with the milk of patience and tears.

Palestine...

A poem suspended between throats, daggers, and stones,

Crucified every morning on a silent news bulletin,

And resurrected alive every evening in the eyes of orphans searching for a homeland

In school bags and among the notebooks of dreams.

We write about you, O Palestine...

Because if we remain silent,

The letters will die of shame,

And the poems will die on the balconies of oppression.