Handful of Ashes

Alas, you were like a grand and magnificent mansion
 And I, from the white summit of your roof
 In the light of the star-studded night
 Listened to the fearsome flow of the Euphrates below
 I heard with tears, with tears
 That on a day of horror massacre and blood
 Your broad walls were shattered stone by stone
 And thrown on the garden around you
 Did the blue room also turn to ashes
 Where, within it's walls and carpets
 My happy childhood rejoiced, my life grew
 And my soul took flight?
 My fathers' home, be assured that when I die
 My soul will come to you as an exiled turtledove
 To sing in tears its song of sorrow over your black ruins
 But tell me, who will bring to me a handful
 Of your sacred ashes the day I die, to put in my grave
 And mix with my ashes, a singer of the homeland?
 A handful of ashes with my own, ancestral home
 Who will bring a handful of ashes from your ashes?
 Of your memories, your suffering and your past
 A handful of ashes to scatter over my heart