Be a child again: Teach me poetry: Teach me the rhythm of the sea: Return to words their initial innocence. Give birth to me from a grain of wheat, not from a wound. Give birth to me and take me back to a world before meaning, so I can embrace you on the grass. Do you hear me? A world before meaning. The tall trees walked with us as a trees, not as meaning. The naked moon crawled with us. A moon, not a silver platter, for a meaning. Be a child again. Teach me poetry. Teach me the rhythm of the sea. Take my hand, so we can cross this threshold between nigth and day together. Together we will learn the first words, and will build a secret nest for the sparrow, our third sibiling. Be a child again, so I can see my face in your mirror. As you I? Am I you? Teach me poetry, so I can elegize you now, now, now. Just as you elegize me!

                     Mahmoud Darwish, del libro In the Presence of Absence.

                                traducción del árabe by Sinan Antoon