The Sorrows of Journeying Bedouins

Here they are-my tribe descending from the heights of the past- dust- colored gray eyed

‏Winds of the future lash them towards oases populated with rainwater

 Here they are - like locusts of imminent drought coming from the last lands of the world

‏They arrived and scattered in this sandy desert like stone

 Here they are- sleeping at the borders of the blue clouds

 Impoverished they bed down in bramble bushes

 They dreamt of dawn and wept as they saw a thunderbolt tearing the darkness

‏limping in the circle of shut horizons, receding gradually

 At dawn, their tears wetted the wind, the earth, and the trees,

Here they rise to their feet walking towards the limits of big cities

 Hungry, thirsty, eating parched bread, drinking putrid water and fire

Here they are at the borders of big cities with hunched backs, broken

‏spirits, overspread in their shabby worn-out garments,

 Here they are, whiplashed by the horsemen of the Tatar army driving them away from the gates of big cities.

‏Here they are before the gates, laying down like pieces of hollowed wood.

 There they are, extinguished stars at the horizons of the blue clouds,

so that in this era, a final curtain comes down on the tales of the journeying Bedouins.