Three Poems (translated by Greg Delanty)

Dying in Alexandria

A month after his death
speeches were given in order:
Greek, French and English
then Italian and Arabic. Of the lot
the dead poet favoured 'Arabic'.
He already reckoned
that the characters of all the other
nations would fade,
- the cities would disappear,
the palaces and emperors,
all that his poetry survived on -
and that the Arab copper would hold out.

'Arabic' will last.
It'll be something like 'Greek' in the age
of its expansion through the Egyptian desert
...