Palestinian Poetry Blogging

Adresses for the soul, outside This Place

I love to travel...
to a village that never hangs my last evening on its cypresses. I love the trees
that witness how two birds suffered at our hands, how we raised the stones.
Wouldn't it be better if we raised our days
to grow slowly and embrace this greeness? I love the rainfall
on the women of distant meadows. I love the glittering water and the scent
of stone.
Wouldn't it be better if we defied our ages
and gazed much longer at the sky before moonset?
Adresses for the soul, outside this place. I love to travel
to any wind...But I don't love to arrive.

From Fewer Roses (1986) by Mahmoud Darwish

Translated by Munir Akash and Carolyn Forché