O My Libya - Laila Neihoum

We’ll go with you wherever you may go.
Our palm trees blossom from your secret springs.
Your face redeems us.

Again we hail the opening morn - Synesius

Again we hail the opening morn,

Again breaks forth the day new-born,

Which, rising in victorious might,

Chases away black-wandering night!

Selene - Ashur Etwebi

to my father

Selene the Enchanting City

The sail gazes drenched with the water of the sea at Selene the enchanting.

Selene is imprisoned in walls of reticent sand,

A Sicilian sailor said in a port tavern:

We were in the three ships that skilled men built from the black forest,

No illness but this place - Rajab Hamad Buhwaish al-Minifi

I have no illness but this place of Egaila,           

the imprisonment of my tribe

and separation from my kin’s abode.

The dead poet friend - Callimachus

They told me, Heracleitus, they told me you were dead; 

They brought me bitter news to hear and bitter tears to shed. 

Butterflies of Meaning - Laila Neihoum

A poet's horizon

Is filled with butterflies

That’s Afaf

And Sakina, sending

her early morning messages

to my sleepy day,

Wake, wake, I pray thee, shrill-toned lyre - Synesius

Wake, wake, I pray thee, shrill-toned lyre!
No more to fan the Teïan fire,
No more the Lesbian strain to raise,
Wake, wake to hymn of nobler praise!

Al-Jilnar - lbn Hani al-Andalusi

In tender age amid green branches
the pomegranate tree’s daughter looked
like the heart of a falcon or of a hawk

I hate the cyclic poem - Callimachus

I hate the cyclic poem and I don’t enjoy

The road that goes too far this way and that.

Date Palm Trinity - Khaled Mattawa

Today the date palms were pruned,
the branches taken before the fruit ripened,
before sweetness littered the sidewalks.