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Land of mine

Town of mine

Mine forever in claiming my life

Like that of those before me

How many times can one love?

How many times can one die?

Jerusalem 

Who fill the shadows

That are cast by the light which

Traverses the world

Which of thy seasons

Is my life? 

In the depth of my mother's womb I was cast

Of olive trees and water melon

Of orange groves and passion fruit

Of hawthorn, sabra, blood

In the colour of memory I was cast

And in the colour of sunrise

In the shade of tents pitched in the sands

Of no-man's lands everywhere, their poles pointing 

Skyward

And their entrance flaps looking

Homeward

And thus my longing was conceived

Of life and death and wandering

My soul is a bird

It is caged in the air

That vibrates with the humming of drones

In burning skies so relentlessly assaulted

It is there that I live

And God knows I can't leave

For Jerusalem is my universe

And my blood Palestine

And my blood and my universe paint the world I inhabit 

With the colours of this soil's fruit and craving 

Which are the only ones I see

On the lips of a Persian girl

I sought the salt of Lake Minya

Which my tongue, like a white sail,

Traversed in search of its source

From the pearls of her sweat

Arose Buhayrat Tabariya,

Which is Bahr Al Minya, and my passion's mi'raj

Lifted the veil from that black stone

In which her secrets reside

And abducted Al Aqsa's dome

Into the realm of trance

I awoke in the exile 

Of her questioning eyes

Mahdi of distant lands, she said

What is this shadow, what 

This wound?

Ah, I bled from a scar only love can awaken

Drink of my blood, my strange gazelle

It is the blood of the martyrs, 

And of these I am one,

Dead or alive, said I

Persia gave me 

My last love 

Africa gave me

My children

Uprooted and distant

From every home, every love

I am mirrored in the white shrouds

That cover the children of Gaza,

Of Sabra, Shatila, Deir Yasin, Sa'sa' Dwayima

And where they have gone, there I am

To plough this scarred earth I endured

What is my name? Jerusalem.