النّاس في بلادي – People in my land

صلاح عبد الصّبور – Salah Abd-es-Sabour

People in my land prey as do hawks;
their song is like the tremble of winter in treetops
and their cackle like the crackle of flames licking wicker.
Their footfalls flail and flounder in the ground
and they kill, they rob, they drink, they burp,
but they are human
and, at any rate,
are kinder when they have a handful of coins
and they believe in fate.

There at the town gate would Old Uncle Mustapha sit,
he who loves the Prophet,
and he’d spend an hour twixt sundown and twilight,
surrounded by a circle of somber males,
and he would tell them a tale of wisdom and insight,