Jerusalem-forum@wanadoo.jo

Samih el Qasim

Palestinian Poets

El-Qassem is among the most famous Palestinian poets. Born in 1939 in the Galilee, he was held under house arrest and imprisoned repeatedly by Israel because of his activism. El-Qassem worked as an editor in the Ghad and Ittihad Newspapers. He has published numerous poetry collections, some of them have been translated into English, and some of his nationalistic poems have been put to music. He is the editor in chief of the Israeli Arab newspaper Koull El Arab.

Bats

Bats on my windows
suck in my words
Bats at the entrance to my house
behind newspaper , in corners
trail my footsteps ,
observing every movement of my head

From the back of the chair, bats watch me
They trail me in the streets
watching my eyes pause
on books, on young girls' legs . . .
they watch and watch

On my neighbor's balcony , bats,
and electronic gadgets hidden in the walls
Now bats are on the verge
of suicide

I am digging a road to daylight

Ashes
Don't you feel we have lost so much
that our " great " love is now only words ,
that there's no more yearning , no urgency,
no real joy in our hearts, and when we meet

no wonder in our eyes?
Don't you feel our encounters are frozen ,
our kisses cold,
that we've lost the fervor of contact
and now merely exchange polite talk ?
Or we forget to meet at all
and tell false excuses . . .
Don't you feel that our brief hurried letters
lack feeling and spirit,
contain no whispers or dreams of love ,
that our responses are slow and burdened . . .
Don't you feel a world has tumbled down
and another arisen ?
That our end will be bitter and frightening
because the end not fall on us suddenly
but came from within.