Palestinian Poetry Blogging

Athens Airport

Athens airport disperses us to other airports. Where can I fight? asked the fighter.
Where can I deliver your child? a pregnant women shouts back.
Where can I invest my money? asks the officer.
This is none of my business, the intellectual says
Where did you come from? asks the customs' official.
And we answer: From the sea!
Where are you going?
To the sea, we answer
What is your address?
A woman of our group says: My village is the bundle on my back.
We have waited in the Athens airport for years.
A young man marries a girl but they have no place for their wedding night.
He asks: Where can I make love to her?
We laugh and say: This is not the right time for that question.
The analyst says: In order to live, they die by mistake.
The literary man says: Our camp will certainly fall.
What do they want with us?
Athens airport welcomes it visitors without end.
Yet, like benches in the terminal, we remain, impatiently waiting for
the sea.
How many more years longer, O Athens's airport?

From Fewer Roses (1986) by Mahmoud Darwish

Translated by Munir Akash and Carolyn Forché

Palestinian Poetry Blogging

They Would Love To See Me Dead

They would love to see me dead, to say: He belongs to us, he is ours.
For twenty years I heard their footsteps on the walls of night
They open no doors, yet they are now. I see three of them:
a poet, killer and a reader of books
Will you have some wine? I asked.
Yes, they answered.
When do you plan to shoot me? I asked.
Take it easy, they answered.
They line up their glasses all in a row and started singing for the people.
I asked: When will you begin my assassination?
Already done, they said...Why did you send your shoes on ahead of your soul?
So it can wander the face of the earth, I said.
The earth is wickedly dark, so why your poem so white?
Because my heart is teeming with thirty seas, I answered.
They ask: Why do you love French wine?
Because I ought to love the most beautiful women, I answered.
They asked: How would you like your death?
Blue like the stars, pouring from a window-would you like some more wine?
Yes, we'll drink, they said
Please take your time. I want you to kill me slowly so I can write my last
poem to my heart's wife. They laughed, and took from me
only the words dedicated to my heart's wife.

From Fewer Roses (1986) by Mahmoud Darwish

Translated by Munir Akash and Carolyn Forché

Palestinian Poetry Blogging


The Flute Cried

The flue cried. If only I could go to Damascus as an echo.
Silk weeps on the shores and pass through a sobbing cry.
Landscapes filled with tears. The flute cried and tore the sky into two women.
It divided the road and broke the heart of the sand grouse.
It divided us so we'd fall in love. O flute, we plea for mercy!
We are not distant as the sunset. Are you crying out so cry in vain,
or to crush the mountain as well as Adam and Eve's apple? O shout of
infinitive silence, cry: Damascus, my woman, I will love and I will survive

The flute cried. If only I could go to Damascus as an echo.
I even believe in what I don't believe. Silky tears burn away our breath.
The flute cried. If only I could cry like the flute, then I would know Damascus.

From Fewer Roses (1986) by Mahmoud Darwish

Translated by Munir Akash and Carolyn Forché

Palestinian Poetry Blogging

Other Barbarian Will Come

Other barbarians will come. The emperor's wife will be abducted. Drums
will beat loudly. Drums will beat so that horses will leap over human bodies from the Aegean sea to the Dardanelles. So why should we be concerned?
What do our wives have to do with horse racing?

The emperor's wife will be abducted. Drums will beat loudly and other barbarians will come. Barbarians fill the cities' emptinesses, slightly
higher than the sea, mightier than the sword in a time of madness. So why
should we be concerned? What do our children have to do with the children of this impudence?

Drums will beat loudly and other barbarians will come. The emperor's wife will be taken from his bedroom. From his bedroom he will launch a military
assault to return his bedmate to his bed. Why should we be concerned? What do fifty thousand victims have to do with this brief marriage?

Can Homer be born after us...and myths open their doors to the throng?

From Fewer Roses (1986) by Mahmoud Darwish

Translated by Munir Akash and Carolyn Forché

Palestinian Poetry Blogging


On The Slope, Higher Than The Sea, They Slept

On the slope, higher than the sea, higher than the cypress, they slept.
The iron sky erased their memories, and the dove flew away
in the direction of their pointing fingers, east of their torn bodies.
Weren't they entitled to throw the basil of their names on the moon in the water?
And plant bitter orange trees in the ditches to dispel the darkness?

They sleep beyond the limits of space, on a slope where words turn to stone.
They sleep on a stone carved from the bones of their phoenix.
One heart can celebrate their feast in nearly no time.
Our heart can steal a place for doves to return to earth's bedrock.
O kin sleeping within me, at the ends of the earth: Peace be upon you! Peace.

From Fewer Roses (1986) by Mahmoud Darwish

Translated by Munir Akash and Carolyn Forché

Palestinian Poetry Blogging

I Will Slog Over This Road

I will slog over this endless road to its end.
Until my heart stops, I will slog over this endless, endless road
with nothing to lose but the dust, what has died in me, and a row of palms
pointing towards what vanishes. I will pass the row of palms.
The wound does not need its poet to paint the blood of death like a pomegranate!
On the roof neighing, I will cut thirty openings for meaning
so that you may end one trail only so as to begin another.
Whether this earth comes to an end or not, we'll slog over this endless road.
More tense than a bow. Our steps, be arrows. Where were we a moment ago?
Shall we join, in a while, the first arrow? The spinning wind whirled us.
So what do you say?

I say: I will slog over this endless, endless road to its end and my own.

From Fewer Roses (1986) by Mahmoud Darwish

Translated by Munir Akash and Carolyn Forché

Palestinian Poetry Blogging

We Travel Like People

We travel like everyone else, but we return to nothing. As if travel were
a path of clouds. We buried our loved ones in the shades of clouds and
between roots of trees.
We said to our wives: Give birth for hundreds of years, so that we may end this journey
within an hour of a country, within a meter of the impossible!
We travel in the chariots of the Psalms, sleep in the tents of the prophets,
and are born again in the language of Gypsies.
We measure space with a hoopoe's beak, and sing so that distance may forget us.
We cleanse the moonlight. Your road is long, so dream of seven women to bear
this long journey on your shoulders. Shake the trunks of palm trees for them.
You know the names, and which one will give birth to the Son of Galilee.
Ours is a country of words: Talk, Talk. Let me rest my road against a stone
Ours is a country of words: Talk, Talk. Let me see an end to this journey.

From Fewer Roses (1986) by Mahmoud Darwish

Translated by Munir Akash and Carolyn Forché

Palestinian Poetry Blogging

We Journey Towards A Home

We journey towards a home not of our flesh. Its chestnut trees are not of
our bones.
Its rocks are not like goats in the mountain hymn. The pebbles' eyes are
not lilies.
We journey towards a home that does not halo our heads with a special sun.
Mythical women applaud us. A sea for us, a sea against us.
When water and wheat are not at hand, eat our love and drink our tears...
There are mourning scarves for poets. A row of marble statues will lift our voice.
And an urn to keep dust of time away from our souls. Roses for us and
against us.
You have your glory, we have ours. Of our home we see only the unseen:
our mystery.
Glory is ours: a throne carried on feet torn by roads that led to every home
but not our own!
The soul must recognize itself in its very soul, or die here.

From Fewer Roses (1986) by Mahmoud Darwish

Translated by Munir Akash and Carolyn Forché

Palestinian Poetry Blogging

On This Earth


We have on this earth what makes life worth living. April's hesitation, the
aroma of bread
at dawn, a woman's point of view about men, the works of Aeschylus, the
beginning
of love, grass on a stone, mothers living on a flute's sigh and the invaders' fear
of memories.

We have on this earth what makes life worth living: the final days of
September, a woman
keeping her apricots ripe after forty, the hour of sunlight in prison, a cloud
reflecting a swarm
of creatures, the peoples' applause for those who face death with a smile,
a tyrants fear of songs.

We have on this earth what makes life worth living: on this earth, the Lady
of Earth,
mother of all beginnings and ends. She was called Palestine. Her name
later became
Palestine. My Lady, because you are my Lady, I deserve life.

From Fewer Roses (1986) by Mahmoud Darwish

Translated by Munir Akash and Carolyn Forché

Palestinian Poetry Blogging

Neighing On The Slope

Horses' neighing on the slope. Downwards or upwards.
I prepare my portrait for my woman to hang on a wall when I die.
She says: Is there a wall to hang it on?
I say: We'll build a room for it. Where? In any house.

Horses' neighing on the slope. Downward or upward.

Does a woman in her thirties need a homeland to put a picture in a frame?
Can I reach the summit of this rugged mountain? The slope is either an
abyss or a place of siege.
Midway it divides. What a journey! Martyrs killing one another.
I prepare my portrait for my woman. When a new horse neighs in you, tear it up.

Horses' neighing on the slope. Upward or upward.

From Fewer Roses (1986) by Mahmoud Darwish

Translated by Munir Akash and Carolyn Forché