(1935-2003)
Mahmoud Darwish’s farewell to Edward Said:
I CANNOT quite say goodbye to Edward Said, because he remains so present among us and alive in the world. He was our conscience and our ambassador to the world, who never tired of resisting the new world order and defending equity, humanity and the sharing of civilisations and cultures. But he has finally tired of the long and absurd fight with death. For 12 years he was heroic in his battle with illness, heroic in his constant creative renewal, through writing, music, chronicling the humanist spirit, continuing the vital quest for meaning and essence and the intellectual appeal for rigour.
Ask Palestinians to name their greatest source of pride and they will tell you immediately: Edward Said. Our cultural history has known no genius to equal his, so plural yet so unique. For the foreseeable future, he will remain the pioneer who brought the name of his homeland out of the political sphere into universal cultural consciousness. Palestine fathered him, yet his fidelity to the values of justice that are so terribly undermined in his homeland and his defence of its children’s rights to life and liberty make him one of the symbolic fathers of the new Palestine.
Edward Said was an indivisible whole. The man, the critic, the musician, the thinker, and the politician were brought together in him, never contradicting each another. He was a charismatic personality with worldwide fame, a rare example of someone both an intellectual and a star, both elegant and eloquent, deep, scathing, and yet a gentle aesthete of life and language.
We are uneasy at saying farewell to him because we want to deny his absence. The universe converges on Palestine for a precious moment. His family now is the world. Our loss is shared, and so is our sorrow. He set Palestine at the heart of the world and brought the world into the heart of Palestine.
(1941-2008)
http://panopticonreview.blogspot.com/…/mahmoud-darwish-grea…
FROM THE PANOPTICON REVIEW ARCHIVES
(Originally posted on August 10, 2008):
Sunday, August 10, 2008
Mahmoud Darwish 1941-2008: Great Poet, Critic, and Activist
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/…/11/world/middleeast/11darwish.html
Middle East
Mahmoud Darwish, Leading Palestinian Poet, Is Dead at 67
by ETHAN BRONNER
August 10, 2008
New York Times
PHOTO: Mahmoud Darwish: 1941-2008
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:
FROM THE PANOPTICON REVIEW ARCHIVES
(Originally posted on August 10, 2008):
Sunday, August 10, 2008
Mahmoud Darwish 1941-2008: Great Poet, Critic, and Activist
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/…/11/world/middleeast/11darwish.html
Middle East
Mahmoud Darwish, Leading Palestinian Poet, Is Dead at 67
by ETHAN BRONNER
August 10, 2008
New York Times
PHOTO: Mahmoud Darwish: 1941-2008
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 DarwishSunday by Mohammed Assadi
August 10, 2008
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)
Palestinian Poet Mahmoud Darwish Is Dead at 67
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)
Palestinian Poet Mahmoud Darwish Is Dead at 67
August 9, 2008
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, dies Sat 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
Posted by Kofi Natambu at 7:00 PM
Labels: 20th century poetry, cultural history, Language and Culture, Mahmoud Darwish, Palestine, Self Determination
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, dies Sat 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
Posted by Kofi Natambu at 7:00 PM
Labels: 20th century poetry, cultural history, Language and Culture, Mahmoud Darwish, Palestine, Self Determination
