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Mahmoud Darwish

Palestinian Poets

Darwish is considered to be the most important contemporary Arab poet working today. He was born in 1942 in the village of Barweh in the Galilee, which was razed to the ground by the Israelis in 1948.

As a result of his political activism he faced house arrest and imprisonment. Darwish was the editor of Ittihad Newspaper before leaving in 1971 to study for a year in the USSR. Then he went to Egypt where he worked in Cairo for Al-Ahram Newspaper and in Beirut, Lebanon as an editor of the Journal “Palestinian Issues”. He was also the director of the Palestinian Research Center. Darwish was a member of the Executive Committee of the PLO and lived in exile between Beirut and Paris until his return in 1996 to Palestine. His poems are known throughout the Arab world, and several of them have been put to music.

His poetry has gained great sophistication over the years, and has enjoyed international fame for a long time. He has published around 30 poetry and prose collections, which have been translated into 35 languages. He is the editor in chief and founder of the prestigious literary review Al Karmel, which has resumed publication in January 1997 out of the Sakakini Centre offices. He published in 1998 the poetry collection: Sareer el Ghariba (Bed of the Stranger), his first collection of love poems. In 2000 he published Jidariyya (Mural) a book consisting of one poem about his near death experience in 1997. He published his book of poetry "Stage of Siege" in 2002. In 1997 a documentary was produced about him by French TV directed by noted French-Israeli director Simone Bitton. He is a commander of the French Order of Arts and Letters.

Intensive Care Unit

I whirl with the wind as the earth narrows before me. I would fly off and rein in the wind, but I am human.. I felt a million flutes tear at my breast. Coated with ice I saw my grave carried on my palms. I disintegrated over the bed. Threw up. Lost consciousness for a while. Died.

Cried out before that short-lived death occurred: I love you, shall I enter into death through your feet? And I died.. I was completely extinguished. How serene death is except for your weeping! And how tranquil if it wasn't for your hands pounding my breasts to have me return. I loved you before and after death, and between the two I saw only my mother's face.

It was the heart that strayed for a while, and then returned. I ask my love: In which heart was I struck? She bent over me and covered my question with a tear. O heart... heart, how is it you lied to me and disrupted my climax ?

We have plenty of time, heart , stabilize So that a hoopoe bird may fly to you from the land of Balqis (Yemen). We have sent letters.
We have crossed thirty seas and sixty coast lines
and still there is time in life for greater wanderings.
And O heart, how is it that you lied to a mare that never tires of the winds. Hold on so we can complete this final embrace and kneel in worship. Hold on..hold on. Let me find out if you are my heart or her voice crying: Take me.
Psalm 9
O rose beyond the reach of time and of the senses
O kiss enveloped in the scarves of all the winds
surprise me with one dream
that my madness will recoil from you
Recoiling from you
In order to approach you
I discovered time
Approaching you
in order to recoil from you
I discovered my senses
Between approach and recoil
there is a stone the size of a dream

It does not approach
It does not recoil
You are my country
A stone is not what I am
therefore I do not like to face the sky
nor do I die level with the ground
but I am a stranger, always a stranger

I am from There:
I come from there and remember,
I was born like everyone is born, I have a mother
and a house with many windows,
I have brothers, friends and a prison.
I have a wave that sea-gullls snatched away.
I have a view of my own and an extra blade of grass.
I have a moon past the peak of words.
I have the godsent food of birds and an olive tree beyond the ken of time.
I have traversed the land before swords turned bodies into banquets.
I come from there. I return the sky to its mother when for its mother the
sky cries, and I weep for a returning cloud to know me.
I have learned the words of blood-stained courts in order to break the rules.
I have learned and dismantled all the words to construct a single one: Home
(Translated by Tania Nasir for publication in Marwan’s 1998 exhibit catalogue: “An Die Kinder Palastinas”, published in Berlin by the Goethe Institut).

Ahmad Al-Za’tar:
For two hands, of stone and of thyme
I dedicate this song.. For Ahmad, forgotten between two butterflies
The clouds are gone and have left me homeless, and
The mountains have flung their mantles and concealed me
..From the oozing old wound to the contours of the land I descend, and
The year marked the separation of the sea from the cities of ash, and
I was alone
Again alone
O alone? And Ahmad
Between two bullets was the exile of the sea
A camp grows and gives birth to fighters and to thyme
And an arm becomes strong in forgetfulness
Memory comes from trains that have left and
Platforms that are empty of welcome and of jasmine
In cars, in the landscape of the sea, in the intimate nights of prison cells
In quick liaisons and in the search for truth was
The discovery of self
In every thing, Ahmad found his opposite
For twenty years he was asking
For twenty years he was wandering
For twenty years, and for moments only, his mother gave him birth
In a vessel of banana leaves
And departed
He seeks an identity and is struck by the volcano
The clouds are gone and have left me homeless, and
The mountains have flung their mantles and concealed me
I am Ahmad the Arab, he said
I am the bullets, the oranges and the memory
(Translated by Tania Nasir for publication in Ulf Thomas Moberg’s 1998 exhibit catalogue: “Palestinian Art”, published in Stockholm by Cinclus)

“Only Iraq”
By Mahmoud Darweesh

Published by the London-based Al Quds Al Araby
[Sunday March 30, 20003- the 11th day of US-led Invasion on Iraq]

I remember A’SSayyab*, shouting at the Gulf in vain:
Iraq, Iraq, Only Iraq…
And from echo comes the only answer.
I remember A’SSayyab....at this Soumari space
A female had triumphed over the sterility of haze
And bequeathed us both the earth and the exile.
I remember A’Ssayyab…that poetry is born in Iraq
So be an Iraqi to become a poet O friend!
I remember A’Ssayyab…who did not find life as he had imagined
Between the Tigris and Euphrates, and did not think as
Gelgamesh had thought of the herbs of eternity, and did not think of resurrection
Thereafter…
I remember AA’Ssayyab…taking from Hamourabi all the lawa
To camouflage loins, and to walk to his tomb
I remember A’Ssayyab, when I cathch fever and hallucinate:
My brothers were preparing dinner to the army of Hulagu,
And no servants but them…my brothers!
I remeber A’Ssayyab…we have not dream of what is not worthy
As the bees’ food, and have not dream of more than
Two small hands shaking our absence…
I remember A’Ssayyab… blacksmiths of my death are arising
From the tombs and manufacturing our shakles!
I remember A’Ssayyab… that poetry is an experience and exile,
Twins, and we have not dream of more than a life
As the life, or die the way we die:
Iraq, Iraq, Only Iraq.

* Bader Shaker A’Ssayyab is a renowned Iraqi poet, died outside Iraq in the early sixties of the last century.