Song of Lebanon, or The Ballad of Qabar Hadra

Discovered in the collection of the Library of the Great Lavra at Mount Athos, temporarily housed in the Xenofontos Monastery during renovation.

[Greek and Arabic parallel text, with unreadable marginal notes in Coptic.]

   I.A.
   song of Lebanon, trad.

   Qabar Hadra left his tribe
   In the hills of Lebanon,
   Rode his horse unto the sea,
   Saw his father lying there.

   And his father was a traitor,
   And his father dealt with Arabs.
   Sold the Arabs secrets of the
   Sacred eyes of the Humbaba.

   On the beach his father lay
   Where the tide flows back and forth,
   Tongue torn out and buried deep
   Where the tide flows back and forth,

   And his throat was cut asunder,
   And the vultures gorged upon him.
   Qabar Hadra saw his father.
   “Saves me time,” said Qabar Hadra.

   Qabar Hadra’s mother had
   Left a dozen years before.
   She became a prostitute
   Down in Abyssinia.

   Qabar Hadra, now an orphan,
   Rode back to the land of cedars,
   Called upon his tribe for vengeance.
   “Now we ride against the Arabs.”

   Seven years in blood were soaked
   As the Lebanese rode out
   Deep into the desert wastes,
   Scattered Arab tribes like sand.

   But like sand the Arabs’ numbers,
   Inexhaustible and endless;
   Like the sea the Arab armies,
   Bailed and bailed and never emptied.

   Qabar Hadra’s wife and son
   In the fastness of his keep
   Fell before the arrows’ shower,
   Arrows many as the sea.

   Qabar Hadra left his fortress
   While it burned; his men had perished; 
   In his arms is infant daughter,
   Fleeing to proclaim the danger.

   For the Arabs would march on
   Now that his stout keep had fallen.
   The would march unto the sea,
   They would seize all Lebanon.

   Qabar Hadra in the desert
   Rode his horse like eagle-lightning,
   Bearing warning to his people,
   In his arms his infant daughter.

   But the desert’s deep and wild—
   Many miles to Lebanon—
   Arrows in his water skin
   Left him dry and left him dying.

   “Will thus fall the land of cedars?
   Will its people all unwary
   Die unarmed and die unarmored,
   Fall before the tides of Arabs?”

   Qabar Hadra’s horse fell dead,
   Qabar Hadra’s daughter cried.
   Nowhere in the desert wild
   Was there drink to quench their thirst.

   Qabar Hadra saw a lizard
   Digging in the endless desert
   Grasped it and besought to pulp it
   But it turned to sand before him.

   Qabar Hadra wept and gnashed
   His teeth and said, ‘Behold the race
   Of Lebanon will die with me,
   Die unwarned and unavenged.”

   There within the endless desert
   Qabar Hadra ate the marrow,
   Qabar Hadra drank the blood.
   Alone he left the endless desert.

   And he came to Lebanon,
   And he called the tribes to him.
   Fought the Arabs as they came, 
   Turned them like the falling tide.

   All the Lebanese exulted.
   “Be our king, O Qabar Hadra!”
   But he left them without speaking,
   Rode off to the Libyan desert.

   “I will do a deed so vast
   It will wish away my sin”
   (This he told all passersby)
   “As the sea foam on the beach.”

   Qabar Hadra’s sword was falcate
   As he sought the amphisbaenae,
   Children of the Gorgon sisters
   Born from blood upon the desert.

   Qabar Hadra swung his sword—
   Each swing cut a snake in two
   Two decapitations with
   Each swing of his falcate sword.

   Winged, and armed with deadly poison
   That reduces men to atoms—
   None dared hunt the amphisbaenae
   Ere the days of Qabar Hadra.

   All through Libya the vast
   Qabar Hadra sought the snake—
   Slew them all and smashed their eggs,
   Wiped them from the book of life.

   Then they called him the Ichneumon.
   But his spirit still hung heavy.
   All his deeds were naught but sea foam.
   He went deeper in the wasteland.

   There he fought the wicked jinn,
   And the ones whom God forgot.
   He passed through the sand of wrath
   And he found a jungle deep.

   There he slew a great chimera
   Of a size unprecedented
   Saved a people from its cruelty 
   That were called the shining ones.

   And they taught him all their lore
   And the words O Toto Ton.
   He’d fought sea, and he’d fought flowers.
   When he thought of it he shook.

   And he learned he had a brother.
   And his spirit still hung heavy,
   All his deeds were naught but sea foam.
   He went to Constantinople.

   There he lived among the tomes,
   There he read the ancient lore.
   Palamedes he was known,
   For the quickness of his grasp.

   Augustine and Aristotle,
   Abraham and Zarathustra,
   And the many works of Mani
   With their vibrant illustrations,

   Homer, Pindar, Hesiod,
   Lesser Key of Solomon,
   Saints and Gnostic heretics
   Laid their wisdom at his feet.

   “Now at last I find a mission
   That can offer me atonement
   Now at last I have found something
   More than dust and more than sea foam.

   “But I know not what to do,
   For the undertaking is
   So amazing and so vast”
   —So he rode to Lebanon.

   There he met the verdant prophet
   Who recited epic poems
   In the language of the Britons—
   Annophon, and All Its Plunder.

   “I have been,” the green one said,
   “Far off in the Britons’ isle,
   Where I tested all the knights
   As I tested Moses once.

   “Take your sword as bright as moonlight,
   Take your idols of the moon gods,
   Take your horse of eagle-lightning,
   Find in Rome what you are seeking.

   “For as I advise you here
   So do Nimu and the mage
   Both advise the Britons’ King
   Who is staying now in Rome.

   Go with God, great Palamedes.”
   Qabar Hadra left his country
   With a pillar to remind them
   Once a man had walked among them.

   Qabar Hadra went to Rome,
   And, then, to the Britons’ isle.
   Did he find the peace he sought?
   Did he sail to Annophon?

   Taliesin sings so sweetly
   In the cold realm of the Britons.
   Qabar Hadra never came back
   To his land, the land of cedars.

   If he did not take this quest,
   God knows he would seek again
   Anything to wash him clean
   As the sea foam on the beach.