Текст песни Marcel Khalife - Ila Ommi

My mother's
(verses by Mahmoud Dervish)

I miss mother’s bread
By maternal coffee over the fire
By the tenderness of maternal hands ...
Childhood memory
Growing in me day after day
I cling to my years
For if I do not die,
I will be ashamed of her tears in the sky!

Cover me
If I come back one day
Long eyelashes of your muslin
Wrap me in thick grass
Sanctified by your bare feet.
Tie me with a strand of your hair
A simple thread from your hem.
If only the depths of your soul, mother,
I could feel
I would be wiser than any imam
I would become omniscient as a god.

If I come back -
May I become a fire
Burning in your poor stove.
Hang me with your laundry
Giving me the sunshine
Now without your day prayer
I can’t get up.
Stay with me,
Give it back to the old me
The constellations of childhood in your window
So that with the chicks
From a wandering distant
I hurried to the nest of your expectation!

Translation by S. Golubev