The fall

I live between fire and plague

with my language, with these mute worlds.

I live in an apple orchard and a sky,

in the first happiness and the drollness

of life with Eve,

master of those cursed threes,

master of fruit.

I live between clouds and sparks

in a stone that grows, in a book

that knows secrets, and knows the fall.

Adonis, Selected Poems (de Songs of Mihyar of Damascus, 1961), Khaled Mattawa (trad.), Yale/Margelios, 2010.