Poetry. Translated from the French by Norma Cole. First published in 1966, Lebanese poet Fouad Gabriel Naffah's MIND-GOD AND THE PROPERTIES OF NITROGEN charts the mind's progress through the material world to the realm of pure spirit. Apprehended, the world survives as trace elements in the mind's experience, in turn refined into concept and ideal, until all images fall away and the spirit frees itself. Crystalline, elusive, his poetry frustrates our tendency to consume form and meaning whole, without first appreciating the subtleties binding them more closely together.