Adonis, the penname of 72-year-old Syrian-Lebanese writer Ali Ahmed Said Esber, had the poem published on the front page of the London-based Arabic daily Al-Quds Al-Arabi.

Herewith parts of "Homage to Baghdad":

"Put aside your coffee and drink something else,

And listen to the words of the invaders:

With the blessing of Heaven

We are leading a preventive war

We will bring the water of life

From the rivers Hudson and Thames

And make it flow in the Tigris and Euphrates

"A war against water and trees

Against birds and the faces of children

The fire of cluster bombs spurts from their hands ...

"The air moans on this reed called the world

The soil reddens and blackens

In tanks and rocket-launchers

In missiles that become flying whales

In vast volcanoes spitting with their lava

"Are we to believe, oh invaders,

That an invasion can bring prophetic missiles?

That civilization is only born in nuclear waste?"

Adonis told AFP the poem was in "homage to the Iraqi people and to Iraq's great contribution to civilization, and not to Saddam Hussein."

"I am with the Iraqi people and against Saddam Hussein's regime," he said of the war launched March 20 by the United States and Britain to end Saddam's 24-year stranglehold on power.

The editor of Al-Quds Al-Arabi, Abdul Bari Atwan, told AFP it was only the second time the daily has given its front page to a poet, the last being Mahmud Darwish, a Palestinian.

"Adonis was very affected by what is going on in Iraq and wanted to contribute to the struggle against the invaders with a poem," said Atwan, a Palestinian who is known for pro-Iraqi sympathies.

"Adonis has a weekly column in Al-Hayat," a Saudi-financed Arabic daily also edited in London, "but he chose Al-Quds Al-Arabi to publish his homage to Baghdad because of our rejection of the modern-day Mongols' invasion of Iraq," Atwan said.

SPACE.WIRE