The voice of my beloved – it comes!
Skipping across the mountains
Leaping over the hills
Disappearing between the trees
Shooting from between the lattices.
If you should lead your armies through our canyons
We will gather on the hilltops like goats
The sun at our backs will form a halo –
While you wander in a strange land
Gazing upwards to exclaim,
“Who is this descending from the mountaintop
clinging to her beloved?”
For this land is a labyrinth
An endless warren of twisting corridors,
Though you may be the Minotaur
You will fall at the hands of our sunlit warriors
They say this land devours even its inhabitants
All the more so, shall it swallow you.
And when I see the arrows fall like rain
And farmers storming down the mountainside
With knives in their hands
And fire in their hearts
Then I know: you cannot stand against us
It is good to see you slinking back through the canyons
Like the wounded leopard you are
Laugh, my brothers, laugh!
Let the valleys be filled with your voices!
For love is stronger than death.
Let them come again!
I would like to see their faces
As we rise above them like a cobra
Blotting out the sun
Whipping downwards to strike
And our bite is the bite of a fox,
Our sting – the sting of a scorpion,
Our hiss – the hiss of a serpent.
Yes, they will come again
And they will stagger back to the plain
Reeling and clutching open wounds
And again they will come
And again they shall be dispelled
and again
and again
until they dare enter this land no longer
