Muhammad Al-Maghut (the Syrian writer) is one of the most eccentric and interesting writers (of verse, poetry, and plays) in the Arab world. He remains untranslated although he was one of the pioneers of free verse. He does not have any formal education and he became known through the journal Shi`r (in late 1950s and 1960s). His latest book was titled I shall Betray My Homeland. This is from the poem Even The Bushes Tremble (my translation):
...I will load my revolver with tears
and will fill my homeland with cries
if you do not give me
a wing and a storm
to go
and a cane of swallow to return
even the high bushes are trembling
when I look at them and cry
Oh, if only the successive days can
get out of my soul, fingers, and eyes
what the knife gets out of the fruit
and the autumn from the bushes
so that I can become a little child
as high as the fireplace
to burn the world
and make of its ashes
a shroud for a little bicycle
that I know
a sad flute for an old
homeland that I worship
thirty years
and I have not shaken a doll
I have not been rebuked by
a grandfather
I have not clung to a blanket
I have not cried in an alley
Thirty years
I have not seen the flag
of my country soaked with rain
while I blow over my palms
in the bitter cold
and sing: my homeland,
my homeland...