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Sunday, August 10, 2008
Mahmoud Darwish, Great Poet, Critic, and Activist: 1941-2008
All, The world has lost one of the greatest and most profound poets of the past century, the extraordinary Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish. A legendary and iconic cultural and political figure of the Palestinian people (who traditionally deeply cherish, honor, and appreciate the art of poetry) Darwish wrote over 20 volumes of vastly popular and critically acclaimed poetry and his work was translated into over 20 languages throughout the world. Darwish was instrumental in making a global audience conscious of the heroic struggles of the Palestinian people for independence from Israeli colonial occupation and the ongoing fight for sovereignty and statehood This is a major loss but the tremendous legacy Darwish has left for people everywhere who revere art, freedom, and justice will never die. Kofi https://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/11/world/middleeast/11darwish.html
Mahmoud Darwish, Leading Palestinian Poet, Is Dead at 67
JERUSALEM — Mahmoud Darwish, whose searing lyrics on Palestinian
exile and tender verse on the human condition led him to be widely
viewed as the pre-eminent man of Palestinian letters as well as one of
the greatest contemporary Arab poets, died Saturday night in Houston
after complications from heart surgery. He was 67.
Mr.
Darwish, a heavy smoker, was known to suffer from health problems.
Still, his death was received among Palestinians with shock and
despair.
Mahmoud
Abbas, the Palestinian president, declared three days of mourning on
Sunday, saying that Mr. Darwish was “the pioneer of the modern
Palestinian cultural project,” adding, “Words cannot describe the depth
of sadness in our hearts.”
Yasir
Abed Rabbo, secretary of the executive committee of the Palestine
Liberation Organization, said, “No one could have imagined that
Mahmoud’s voice could disappear.”
The
Palestinian Authority will give Mr. Darwish a state funeral in the West
Bank on Tuesday, the first since Yasir Arafat died in 2004.
Twice
divorced with no children, Mr. Darwish had the straight hair, wire-rim
glasses and blue blazer of a European intellectual and was,
paradoxically for someone seen as the voice of his people, a loner with a
narrow circle of friends. He was uncomfortable in public, where he was
widely recognized, but he cared deeply about young Arab writers and
published their work in the Ramallah-based journal that he edited, Al
Karmel.
And
while he wrote in classical Arabic rather than in the language of the
street, his poetry was anything but florid or baroque, employing a
directness and heat that many saw as one of the salvations of modern
literary Arabic.
“He
used high language to talk about daily life in a truly exceptional
way,” said Ghassan Zaqtan, a Palestinian poet and a close friend. “This
is someone who remained at the top of Arabic poetry for 40 years. It was
not simply about politics.”
Nonetheless,
politics played a major role in Mr. Darwish’s life and work. Born to a
middle-class Muslim farming family in a village near Haifa in what is
today Israel, Mr. Darwish identified strongly with the secular
Palestinian national movement long led by Mr. Arafat.
Palestinians in Ramallah, West Bank, held a vigil on Sunday in honor of Mahmoud Darwish, who died Saturday in Houston.Credit
Abbas Momani/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Mr.
Zaqtan and Mr. Abed Rabbo said he was the author of Mr. Arafat’s
famous words at the United Nations General Assembly in 1974: “I come
bearing an olive branch and a freedom fighter’s gun. Do not let the
olive branch fall from my hand.”
He
also wrote the Palestinian declaration of independent statehood in 1988
and served on the executive committee of the P.L.O. But he quit in the
early 1990s over differences with the leadership and moved firmly out of
the political sphere, lamenting the rise of the Islamist group Hamas
and what he viewed as the bankruptcy of Palestinian public life.
Mr.
Darwish first gained a following in the 1960s for his frank political
poems, and to some extent they remain the source of his fame. Among his
best known was “Identity Card” from 1964, in which he attacked Israel’s
desire to overlook the presence of Arabs on its land:
“Write down!/I am an Arab/ and my identity card number is 50,000/I have eight children/And the ninth will come after a summer.”
It
ends: “Therefore!/Write down on the top of the first page:/I do not
hate people/Nor do I encroach/But if I become hungry/The usurper’s flesh
will be my food/Beware .../Beware ... /Of my hunger/And my anger.”
There
were other harsh political works in the following two decades, but
those who knew Mr. Darwish said he had often expressed little pride in
them, preferring his more personal and universal poems. He told The New
York Times in a 2001 interview in Paris: “Sometimes I feel as if I am
read before I write. When I write a poem about my mother, Palestinians
think my mother is a symbol for Palestine. But I write as a poet, and my
mother is my mother. She’s not a symbol.”
During
the war that led to Israel’s independence, Mr. Darwish and his family,
from the Palestinian village of Al Barweh, left for Lebanon. The village
was razed but the family sneaked back across the border into Israel,
where Mr. Darwish spent his youth.
Politically
active fairly early, he was arrested several times and was a member of
the Israeli Communist Party. He left in 1971 and lived in the Soviet
Union, Tunisia, Egypt, Lebanon and France.
After
Mr. Arafat set up the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Gaza
in the mid-1990s, Mr. Darwish came to live in Ramallah, where he rented a
house. He said he never really felt at home there — he made clear that
exile for him was increasingly an emotional rather than a purely
political dilemma — and wrote more comfortably when in Europe.
He maintained a wide circle of literary acquaintances, including Israelis, and he said he fully supported a two-state solution.
His
work earned him a number of international literary awards and was
translated into more than 20 languages, more than any other contemporary
Arab poet, according to Mahmoud al-Atshan, a professor of Arabic
literature at Bir Zeit University in the West Bank.
There
was at first some question of where he would be buried, as some close
to him sought to persuade Israel to let him be buried in the area of his
home village. But the mayor of Ramallah said Mr. Darwish would be
buried in Ramallah, the effective Palestinian capital of the West Bank.
A version of this article appears in print on , on Page B6 of the New York edition with the headline: Mahmoud Darwish, 67, Leading Palestinian Poet. Order Reprints|Today's Paper
Published work by Mahmoud Darwish
Poetry Asafir bila ajniha (Wingless birds), 1960 Awraq Al-Zaytun (Leaves of olives), 1964 Ashiq min filastin (A lover from Palestine), 1966 Akhir al-layl (The end of the night), 1967 Yawmiyyat jurh filastini (Diary of a Palestinian wound), 1969 Habibati tanhad min nawmiha (My beloved awakens), 1969 al-Kitabah 'ala dhaw'e al-bonduqiyah (Writing in the light of the gun), 1970 al-'Asafir tamut fi al-jalil (Birds are Dying in Galilee), 1970 Mahmoud Darwish works, 1971. Two volumes Mattar na'em fi kharif ba'eed (Light rain in a distant autumn) 1971 Uhibbuki aw la uhibbuki (I love you, I love you not), 1972 Jondiyyun yahlum bi-al-zanabiq al-baidaa' (A soldier dreaming of white lilies), 1973 Complete Works, 1973. Now al-A'amal al-jadida (2004) and al-A'amal al-oula (2005). Muhawalah raqm 7 (Attempt number 7), 1974 Tilka suratuha wa-hadha intihar al-ashiq (That's her image, and that's the suicide of her lover), 1975 Ahmad al-za'tar, 1976 A'ras (Weddings), 1977 al-Nasheed al-jasadi (The music of human flesh), 1980. Joint work Qasidat Bayrut (Ode to Beirut), 1982 Madih al-zill al-'ali (A eulogy for the tall shadow), 1983 Hissar li-mada'eh al-bahr, 1984 Victims of a Map, 1984. Joint work with Samih al-Qasim and Adonis in English. Sand and Other Poems, 1986 Hiya ughniyah, hiya ughniyah (It's a song, it's a song), 1985 Ward aqal (Fewer roses), 1985 Ma'asat al-narjis, malhat al-fidda (Tragedy of daffodils, comedy of silver), 1989 Ara ma oreed (I see what I want), 1990 Ahad 'asher kaukaban (Eleven planets), 1992 Limaza tarakt al-hissan wahidan (Why did you leave the horse alone?), 1995. English translation 2006 by Jeffrey Sacks (ISBN 0976395010) Psalms, 1995. A selection from Uhibbuki aw la uhibbuki, translation by Ben Bennani Sareer El-Ghariba (Bed of a stranger), 1998 Then Palestine, 1999 (with Larry Towell, photographer, and Rene Backmann) Jidariyya (Mural), 2000 The Adam of Two Edens: Selected Poems, 2001 Halat Hissar (State of siege), 2002 La ta'tazer 'amma fa'alt (Don't apologize for what you did), 2003 Unfortunately, It Was Paradise: Selected Poems, 2003. Translations by Munir Akash, Caroyln Forché and others al-A'amal al-jadida (The new works), 2004. A selection of Darwish's recent works al-A'amal al-oula (The early works), 2005. Three volumes, a selection of Darwish's early works Ka-zahr el-lawz aw ab'ad (Same as almond flowers or farther), 2005
Prose Shai'on 'an al-wattan (Something about the homeland), 1971 Wada'an ayatuha al-harb, wada'an ayuha al-salaam (Farwell, war, farwell, peace), 1974 Yawmiyyat al-hozn al-'aadi (Diary of the usual sadness), 1973 Dhakirah li-al-nisyan (Memory for Forgetfulness), 1987. English translation 1995 by Ibrahim Muhawi Fi wasf halatina (Describing our condition), 1987 al-Rasa'il (The Letters), 1990. Joint work with Samih al-Qasim Aabiroon fi kalamen 'aaber (Bypassers in bypassing words), 1991 Fi hadrat al-ghiyab (In the presence of absence), 2006 See poem entitled "Under Siege" by Mahmoud Darwish following the obituaries Palestinians plan big funeral for poet Darwish Sun Aug 10, 2008 by Mohammed Assadi RAMALLAH, West Bank (Reuters) - Mahmoud Darwish, whose poetry encapsulated the Palestinian cause, will get the equivalent of a state funeral in the West Bank on Tuesday -- an honour only previously accorded to PLO leader Yasser Arafat. Tributes for Darwish poured in on Sunday, a day after the 67-year-old writer died from complications following heart surgery in a U.S. hospital in Houston, Texas. "He translated the pain of the Palestinians in a magical way. He made us cry and made us happy and shook our emotions," said Egypt's vernacular poet Ahmed Fouad Negm. "Apart from being the poet of the Palestinian wound, which is hurting all Arabs and all honest people in the world, he is a master poet," Negm told Reuters in Cairo. Darwish's funeral in Ramallah will be the first sponsored by the Palestinian Authority since Arafat died in 2004. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas declared three days of national mourning. People held candle-lit vigils on Saturday and Sunday in the darkened streets of Ramallah, where Darwish's poems were read aloud and some mourners wept. French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said his country shared Palestinian admiration for "this great figure whose poetry, which reflects nostalgia and liberty, speaks to us all. "Mahmoud Darwish knew how to express the attachment of an entire people to its land and the absolute desire for peace. His message, which calls for coexistence, will continue to resonate and will eventually be heard," Kouchner said in a statement. The poet, born in territory now Israel, had made his home in the West Bank city since returning in the 1990s from a long exile during which he rose to prominence in Arafat's Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO). "The Palestinian question, in Mahmoud Darwish's poetry, was no longer a legend, but the story of people made of flesh, blood and feelings," said Zehi Wahbi, a friend of Darwish and a Lebanese television presenter and poet. For Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa, Darwish was "the voice of Palestinian civilisation, with its pains, sadness and ambitions". Widely seen as the Palestinian national poet, Darwish's writing was much translated. Several of his books were translated into Israel's vernacular, Hebrew, though the nationalist message of his work was largely shunned in the Jewish state, where a plan in the 1990's to teach his poetry in state schools was quickly shelved. Darwish won new generations of admirers with work that evoked not just the pain of Palestinians displaced, as he was as a child, by the foundation of Israel 60 years ago, but also subtle paradoxes and broader human themes. He enjoyed a following across the Arab world, where he had the kind of readership contemporary poets in English and other European languages, eclipsed by novelists, can only dream of. "He turned the Palestinian cause into songs that transcended the cause and all other Arab issues," said Abdel-Rahman al-Abnoudi, a prominent Egyptian poet and a friend of Darwish. Darwish gave voice to Palestinians' dreams of statehood, helping to craft their 1988 declaration of independence. He penned the words Arafat spoke at the United Nations in 1974: "Today I have come bearing an olive branch and a freedom fighter's gun. Do not let the olive branch fall from my hand." (Additional reporting by Allyn Fisher-Ilan in Jerusalem, Thomas Perry in Beirut, Alaa Shahine in Cairo and Tamora Vidaillet in Paris; Writing by Alistair Lyon, edited by Richard Meares) August 9, 2008 Palestinian Poet Mahmoud Darwish Is Dead at 67 By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) -- Mahmoud Darwish, a Palestinian cultural icon whose poetry eloquently told of his people's experiences of exile, occupation and infighting, died Saturday in Houston. He was 67. The predominant Palestinian poet, whose work has been translated into more than 20 languages and won numerous international awards, died following open heart surgery at a Houston hospital, said Nabil Abu Rdeneh, a spokesman for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. Born to a large Muslim family in historical Palestine -- now modern-day Israel -- he described his people's struggle for independence while also criticizing both the Israeli occupation and the Palestinian leadership. He gave voice to the Palestinian dreams of statehood, crafted their declaration of independence and helped forge a Palestinian national identity. ''He felt the pulse of Palestinians in beautiful poetry. He was a mirror of the Palestinian society,'' said Ali Qleibo, a Palestinian anthropologist and lecturer in cultural studies at Al Quds University in Jerusalem. Darwish first gained prominence in the 1960s with the publication of his first poetry collection, ''Bird without Wings.'' It included the poem ''Identity Card'' that defiantly spoke in the first person of an Arab man giving his identity number -- a common practice among Palestinians when dealing with Israeli authorities and Arab governments -- and vowing to return to his land. Many of his poems have been put into music -- most notably ''Rita,'' ''Birds of Galilee'' and ''I yearn for my mother's bread'' -- and have become anthems for at least two generations of Arabs. He wrote another 21 collections, the last, ''The Impression of Butterflies,'' in 2008. Qleibo described Darwish's poetry as ''the easy impossible,'' for Darwish's ability to condense the Palestinian narrative into simple, evocative language -- breaking away from the more traditional heavy, emotive and rhythmic verse of other Arab poets. Darwish wrote the Palestinian Declaration of Independence in 1988, read by the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat when he unilaterally declared statehood. The declaration was symbolic and had no concrete significance. Darwish's influence was keenly felt among Palestinians, serving as a powerful voice for many. ''He started out as a poet of resistance and then he became a poet of conscience,'' said Palestinian lawmaker Hanan Ashrawi. ''He embodied the best in Palestinians ... even though he became iconic he never lost his sense of humanity. We have lost part of our essence, the essence of the Palestinian being.'' Last year, Darwish recited a poem damning the deadly infighting between rival Palestinian groups Hamas and Fatah, describing it as ''a public attempt at suicide in the streets.'' Darwish was born in the Palestinian village of Birweh near Haifa, which was destroyed in the 1948 Mideast war that led to Israel's independence. He joined the Israeli Communist Party after high school and began writing poems for leftist newspapers. ''When we think of Darwish ... he is our heart, and our tongue,'' said Issam Makhoul, an Arab lawmaker and veteran member of the Israeli Communist Party. Darwish left Israel in the early 1970s to study in the former Soviet Union, and from there he traveled to Egypt and Lebanon. He joined the Palestine Liberation Organization, but resigned in 1993 in protest over the interim peace accords that the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat signed with Israel. Darwish moved to the West Bank city of Ramallah in 1996. His work is widely admired on the Arab and Palestinian street. In Israel, it evokes different feelings. In 2000, Israel's education minister, Yossi Sarid, suggested including some of Darwish's poems in the Israeli high school curriculum. But Prime Minister Ehud Barak overruled him, saying Israel was not ready yet for his ideas in the school system. In 1988, a Darwish poem, ''Passing in Passing Words,'' was read by then-Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir inside Israel's parliament as an example of the Palestinians' unwillingness to live alongside Jews. The poem suggested that Darwish called for Jews to leave the region. Adel Usta, a specialist on Darwish's poetry, said the poem was misunderstood and mistranslated. ''He created a national Palestinian identity that no other poet could achieve,'' Usta said. Darwish married and divorced twice. He does not have any children. Siham Daoud, a fellow poet and longtime friend of Darwish, said he traveled to a hospital in Houston, Texas, ten days ago for the surgery and asked not to be resuscitated if it did not succeed. She said Darwish had a history of heart problems, and had been operated on twice in the past. Akram Haniyeh, Editor-in-Chief of the Al Ayyam newspaper and a close friend of Darwish, was by Darwish's bedside in Houston. He said Darwish underwent an operation on Wednesday and there were complications.
Mahmoud Darwish, poet of the Palestinians, diesSat Aug 9, 2008 By Mohammed Assadi and Ali Sawafta RAMALLAH, West Bank, Aug 9 (Reuters) - Mahmoud Darwish, whose poetry his fellow Palestinians embraced as the voice of their suffering, died on Saturday after heart surgery in Texas.
President Mahmoud Abbas declared three days of national mourning to honour the 67-year-old writer who, a close friend said, never came round from a major operation two days earlier.
"The passing of our great poet, Mahmoud Darwish, the lover of Palestine, the pioneer of the modern Palestinian cultural project, and the brilliant national leader, will leave a great gap in our political, cultural and national lives," Abbas said.
"Words cannot describe the depth of sadness in our hearts," he added. "Mahmoud, may God help us for your loss."
The death of a man whose life and words were tightly bound up in a struggle for a Palestinian national rebirth that seems little closer now than when his first work was published in 1960 immediately triggered a wider outpouring of popular emotion.
As news from Houston filtered through, people, some weeping, gathered round candles in the darkened streets of Ramallah. The poet had made his home in the West Bank city since returning in the 1990s from a long exile during which he rose to prominence in Yasser Arafat's Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO).
Palestinian television interrupted programmes to air film of Darwish, the "national poet", reading from his work. Officials said his body would be flown back for burial in Ramallah.
He won new generations of admirers with work that evoked the pain of Palestinians displaced, as he was as a child, by the establishment of Israel 60 years ago, but also did not shrink from criticism and touched on broader human themes, like love.
An intensely private man who largely lived alone, he enjoyed a mass following across the Arab world, where he had the kind of readership contemporary poets in other languages only dream of.
Palestinians at home and abroad spoke of intense, personal feelings of bereavement. "His death is a loss to the Palestinian people, to the Palestinian cause and to freedom-loving people around the world," said Ahmad Ibrahim, a banker in Ramallah.
Philosophy professor Abdel-Rahim al-Sheikh was choked with emotion: "I cannot speak now. My soul is not helping me."
EXILE
Just last month Darwish packed out a hall for a reading in Ramallah and millions watched on television an event to mark the 60th anniversary of the Palestinian "Nakba", or catastrophe.
In 1948, Darwish was among that half of the Arab population of Palestine driven from their homes, in his family's case near the port of Haifa. They later returned to live in the area.
Jailed several times, Darwish left in 1971 for the Soviet Union. Exile in Cairo, Beirut, Tunis and Paris followed.
In 1988, Israel's parliament debated one work which incensed Israelis who saw an attack on the existence of the Jewish state -- though Darwish said he wanted an end only to their occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip: "So leave our land. Our shore, our sea. Our wheat, our salt, our wound," he had written.
"Take your portion from our blood and go away".
In 2000, an Israeli minister proposed adding Darwish to the school curriculum -- but the proposal went no further.
Darwish served on the executive committee of the PLO but broke with Arafat when the two disagreed over the 1993 Oslo accords on establishing a Palestinian state alongside Israel.
Fifteen years on, negotiations appear to most observers to be going nowhere. Violence, a split between Abbas and his Islamist rivals in Gaza and continued Israeli settlement in the West Bank leave few Palestinians hopeful of a viable state.
Last month, Darwish, a heavy smoker who had twice before undergone major heart surgery, spoke to Reuters of his fading health and his gloomy assessment of the world he would leave.
His last works are imbued with a sarcastic humour and a sense of both Israelis and Palestinians, however antagonistic, bound irredeemably together to share an uncertain future.
"Sarcasm helps me overcome the harshness of the reality we live, eases the pain of scars and makes people smile," he said.
"History laughs at both the victim and the aggressor."
In a new poem called "The Written Script", Darwish related a dialogue between a victim and his enemy who fall into a pit:
He saw Israelis bent on suicide, taking Palestinians with them, if the occupation of the West Bank went on: "A killer and his victim die together in one hole," he says in the piece.
Another recent poem "The Dice Thrower", told how Darwish saw death coming yet he clung to life: "To Life I say: Go slow, wait for me until the drunkenness dries in my glass.
"I have no role in what I was or who I will be.
"It is chance and chance has no name.
"I call the doctor 10 minutes before the death, 10 minutes are sufficient to live by chance." (Additional reporting by Wafa Amr, Joseph Nasr and Houston bureau; Writing by Alastair Macdonald)
Poem by Maumoud Darwish Under Siege
Here on the slopes of hills, facing the dusk and the cannon of time Close to the gardens of broken shadows, We do what prisoners do, And what the jobless do: We cultivate hope. *** A country preparing for dawn. We grow less intelligent For we closely watch the hour of victory: No night in our night lit up by the shelling Our enemies are watchful and light the light for us In the darkness of cellars. *** Here there is no "I". Here Adam remembers the dust of his clay. *** On the verge of death, he says: I have no trace left to lose: Free I am so close to my liberty. My future lies in my own hand. Soon I shall penetrate my life, I shall be born free and parentless, And as my name I shall choose azure letters... *** You who stand in the doorway, come in, Drink Arabic coffee with us And you will sense that you are men like us You who stand in the doorways of houses Come out of our morningtimes, We shall feel reassured to be Men like you! *** When the planes disappear, the white, white doves Fly off and wash the cheeks of heaven With unbound wings taking radiance back again, taking possession Of the ether and of play. Higher, higher still, the white, white doves Fly off. Ah, if only the sky Were real [a man passing between two bombs said to me]. *** Cypresses behind the soldiers, minarets protecting The sky from collapse. Behind the hedge of steel Soldiers piss—under the watchful eye of a tank— And the autumnal day ends its golden wandering in A street as wide as a church after Sunday mass... *** [To a killer] If you had contemplated the victim’s face And thought it through, you would have remembered your mother in the Gas chamber, you would have been freed from the reason for the rifle And you would have changed your mind: this is not the way to find one’s identity again. *** The siege is a waiting period Waiting on the tilted ladder in the middle of the storm. *** Alone, we are alone as far down as the sediment Were it not for the visits of the rainbows. *** We have brothers behind this expanse. Excellent brothers. They love us. They watch us and weep. Then, in secret, they tell each other: "Ah! if this siege had been declared..." They do not finish their sentence: "Don’t abandon us, don’t leave us." *** Our losses: between two and eight martyrs each day. And ten wounded. And twenty homes. And fifty olive trees... Added to this the structural flaw that Will arrive at the poem, the play, and the unfinished canvas. *** A woman told the cloud: cover my beloved For my clothing is drenched with his blood. *** If you are not rain, my love Be tree Sated with fertility, be tree If you are not tree, my love Be stone Saturated with humidity, be stone If you are not stone, my love Be moon In the dream of the beloved woman, be moon [So spoke a woman to her son at his funeral] *** Oh watchmen! Are you not weary Of lying in wait for the light in our salt And of the incandescence of the rose in our wound Are you not weary, oh watchmen? *** A little of this absolute and blue infinity Would be enough To lighten the burden of these times And to cleanse the mire of this place. *** It is up to the soul to come down from its mount And on its silken feet walk By my side, hand in hand, like two longtime Friends who share the ancient bread And the antique glass of wine May we walk this road together And then our days will take different directions: I, beyond nature, which in turn Will choose to squat on a high-up rock. *** On my rubble the shadow grows green, And the wolf is dozing on the skin of my goat He dreams as I do, as the angel does That life is here...not over there. *** In the state of siege, time becomes space Transfixed in its eternity In the state of siege, space becomes time That has missed its yesterday and its tomorrow. *** The martyr encircles me every time I live a new day And questions me: Where were you? Take every word You have given me back to the dictionaries And relieve the sleepers from the echo’s buzz. *** The martyr enlightens me: beyond the expanse I did not look For the virgins of immortality for I love life On earth, amid fig trees and pines, But I cannot reach it, and then, too, I took aim at it With my last possession: the blood in the body of azure. *** The martyr warned me: Do not believe their ululations Believe my father when, weeping, he looks at my photograph How did we trade roles, my son, how did you precede me. I first, I the first one! *** The martyr encircles me: my place and my crude furniture are all that I have changed. I put a gazelle on my bed, And a crescent of moon on my finger To appease my sorrow. *** The siege will last in order to convince us we must choose an enslavement that does no harm, in fullest liberty! *** Resisting means assuring oneself of the heart’s health, The health of the testicles and of your tenacious disease: The disease of hope. *** And in what remains of the dawn, I walk toward my exterior And in what remains of the night, I hear the sound of footsteps inside me. *** Greetings to the one who shares with me an attention to The drunkenness of light, the light of the butterfly, in the Blackness of this tunnel! *** Greetings to the one who shares my glass with me In the denseness of a night outflanking the two spaces: Greetings to my apparition. *** My friends are always preparing a farewell feast for me, A soothing grave in the shade of oak trees A marble epitaph of time And always I anticipate them at the funeral: Who then has died...who? *** Writing is a puppy biting nothingness Writing wounds without a trace of blood. *** Our cups of coffee. Birds green trees In the blue shade, the sun gambols from one wall To another like a gazelle The water in the clouds has the unlimited shape of what is left to us Of the sky. And other things of suspended memories Reveal that this morning is powerful and splendid, And that we are the guests of eternity. Translated by Marjolijn De Jager Submitted by C.K. Mahmoud Darwish Copyright 2008 The Associated Press
"I'm for truth, no matter who tells it. I'm for justice, no matter who it's for or against."
W.E.B. DuBois (1868-1963)
"There is but one coward on earth, and that is the coward that dare not know."
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968)
"Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle. And so we must straighten our backs and work for our freedom. A man can't ride you unless your back is bent. "
James Baldwin (1924-1987)
"Precisely at the point when you begin to develop a conscience you must find yourself at war with your society."
Aimé Césaire (1913-2008)
"A civilization that proves incapable of solving the problems it creates is a decadent civilization. A civilization that chooses to close its eyes to its most crucial problems is a stricken civilization. A civilization that uses its principles for trickery and deceit is a dying civilization."
Nina Simone (1933-2003)
"There's no other purpose, so far as I'm concerned, for us except to reflect the times, the situations around us and the things we're able to say through our art, the things that millions of people can't say. I think that's the function of an artist and, of course, those of us who are lucky leave a legacy so that when we're dead, we also live on. That's people like Billie Holiday and I hope that I will be that lucky, but meanwhile, the function, so far as I'm concerned, is to reflect the times, whatever that might be."
Amilcar Cabral (1924-1973)
"Always bear in mind that the people are not fighting for ideas, for the things in anyone's head. They are fighting to live better and in peace, to see their lives go forward, to guarantee the future of their children ....Hide nothing from the masses of our people. Tell no lies. Expose lies whenever they are told. Mask no difficulties, mistakes, failures. Claim no easy victories..." .
Angela Davis (b. 1944)
"The idea of freedom is inspiring. But what does it mean? If you are free in a political sense but have no food, what's that? The freedom to starve?”
Duke Ellington (1899-1974)
“Jazz is the freest musical expression we have yet seen. To me, then, jazz means simply freedom of musical speech! And it is precisely because of this freedom that so many varied forms of jazz exist. The important thing to remember, however, is that not one of these forms represents jazz by itself. Jazz simply means the freedom to have many forms.”
Amiri Baraka (1934-2014)
"Thought is more important than art. To revere art and have no understanding of the process that forces it into existence, is finally not even to understand what art is."
Frederick Douglass (1817-1895)
"Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.” --August 3, 1857
Cecil Taylor (1929-2018)
“Musical categories don’t mean anything unless we talk about the actual specific acts that people go through to make music, how one speaks, dances, dresses, moves, thinks, makes love...all these things. We begin with a sound and then say, what is the function of that sound, what is determining the procedures of that sound? Then we can talk about how it motivates or regenerates itself, and that’s where we have tradition.”
Ella Baker (1903-1986)
"Strong people don't need strong leaders"
Paul Robeson (1898-1976)
"The artist must take sides. He must elect to fight for freedom or for slavery. I have made my choice. I had no alternative."
John Coltrane (1926-1967)
"I want to be a force for real good. In other words, I know there are bad forces. I know that there are forces out here that bring suffering to others and misery to the world, but I want to be the opposite force. I want to be the force which is truly for good."
Miles Davis (1926-1991)
"Jazz is the big brother of Revolution. Revolution follows it around."
C.L.R. James (1901-1989)
"All development takes place by means of self-movement, not organization by external forces. It is within the organism itself (i.e. within the society) that there must be realized new motives, new possibilities."
Frantz Fanon (1925-1961)
"Now, political education means opening minds, awakening them, and allowing the birth of their intelligence as [Aime] Cesaire said, it is 'to invent souls.' To educate the masses politically does not mean, cannot mean, making a political speech. What it means is to try, relentlessly and passionately, to teach the masses that everything depends on them."
Edward Said (1935-2003)
“I take criticism so seriously as to believe that, even in the midst of a battle in which one is unmistakably on one side against another, there should be criticism, because there must be critical consciousness if there are to be issues, problems, values, even lives to be fought for."
Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937)
“The challenge of modernity is to live without illusions and without becoming disillusioned. There must be pessimism of the intellect and optimism of the will.”
Susan Sontag (1933-2004)
"Do stuff. Be clenched, curious. Not waiting for inspiration’s shove or society’s kiss on your forehead. Pay attention. It’s all about paying attention. Attention is vitality. It connects you with others. It makes you eager. Stay eager."
Kofi Natambu, editor of The Panopticon Review, is a writer, poet, cultural critic, and political journalist whose poetry, essays, criticism, reviews, and journalism have appeared in many literary magazines, journals, newspapers, and anthologies. He is the author of a biography MALCOLM X: His Life & Work (Alpha Books) and two books of poetry: THE MELODY NEVER STOPS (Past Tents Press) and INTERVALS (Post Aesthetic Press). He was the founder and editor of SOLID GROUND: A NEW WORLD JOURNAL, a national quarterly magazine of the arts, culture, and politics and the editor of a literary anthology NOSTALGIA FOR THE PRESENT (Post Aesthetic Press). Natambu has read his work throughout the country and given many lectures and workshops at academic and arts institutions. He has taught American literature, literary theory and criticism, cultural history and criticism, film studies, political science, creative writing, philosophy, critical theory, and music history and criticism (Jazz, Blues, R&B, Hip Hop) at many universities and colleges. He was also a curator in the Education Department of Detroit’s Museum of African American History. Born in Detroit, Michigan, Natambu currently lives in Berkeley, California with his wife Chuleenan.
