News at Eleven: "It's not the destruction of New York

that I imagine in the poem. I love New York. It's the destruction of American political power. Instead of transforming the world according to its values, America has turned the world into a military barracks and a marketplace. I think America has betrayed the spirit of its founding humanism."

So does it feel to him, post 9/11, that East and West are moving further apart, in a way he could not have imagined when he wrote Funeral?

from The National: The Syrian poet Adonis talks about the power of poetry

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