More ancient thou than Sumer, more radiant thou than Babylon,
more glorious than Jerusalem.

Byblos,
High place of pilgrimage, Acropolis holy, ancient Gubla with purest soul.

Are you of heaven or are you of earth?
Outside of time, more eternal than time?

Byblos,
You gave letters their sounds, made sounds and words visible, like your walls.
Seeing and hearing by your magic go hand in hand,
You gave birth to the alphabet signs
And all the epic of the writing of our thought.

From papyrus in Byblos loading the shelves,
Come the Bible and Bibliography, words owed to you.

Whoever can grasp you, everything holds,
Humanity, all being, and genesis lighting the dark night of time.

If the triremes of old left their wake across the oceans,
Your alphabet letters have left trails in the cosmos.

Superb like the “I” of the creation unique,
You cast a long shadow where nations bow down
To olden Phoenicia and to Lebanon today,
You beacon of one more thousand years,
Mystical Eastern light conquering the soul of the West.

Your marvelous foam-flecked strand, your towns pre-dating history…
That which persists of you touches our human heart-strings.
Your stones tell stories, each of its light and culture,
While love in Byblos is with passion consummated.

Saint John and Saint Aquilina,
Saint James we know and the noble knight Saint George,
From many holy virgins early
To saints of present day with new renown,
Rafka, Sharbel and the monk once born in Hardeen.

Your townsfolk know it not but bear
A heritage immense, the soul indeed of the whole nation.

Byblos,
Loving you is my daily prayer,
Loving the little and the great,
Great minds there were that for you stand,
Like Philo, renowned in Alexandria, but Byblos-born.

Your gracious virgins, your legends and your gods,
Ishtar, Adonis and Baal,
Kings older than the siege of Troy,
From Abishmou to Hiram and his son called Ito Baal.

Within these walls nostalgia sleeps, glory of our distant fathers,
Byblos my life, Byblos my love,
Byblos light of all my days!

Joseph Matar
All rights reserved © LebanonArt
Translated from French: K.J.Mortimer