Poets From Palestine

"Bless poetry books that cross oceans in battered envelopes, bearing small flames of words."

"hopes for peace: hand clasped in hand firmer than fist on a gun or club, hand raised in greeting stronger than hand raised for violence"

"Today his words surround me with the quiet intensity of growing things, roots planted a long time ago lacing the distances of my heart."

"See how we save even the broken bits of pottery, fitting fragments together along jagged lines to remember you"

"Did my parents know that what they planted, roots against the drought, would survive?"

"consider the infinite fragility of an infant's skull, how the bones lie soft and open only time knitting them shut"

"consider a delicate porcelain bowl how it crushes under a single blow- in one moment whole years disappear"

"The distance between one breath and another is like the miles starlight travels to reach my dreams."

"so I hoard memories sort them for seeds to plant pray they root"

"Once she could have held anything steady and safe: a glass of tea, her brother's baby. Now her hands shake at the weight of a fork."

"ground resilient beneath our feet, sky glimmering between branches of trees older than any of us."

"She took her slice of life then gave without measuring or counting"

"what's left but shards of memory smoothed and hoarded, shrapnel griefs, a few regrets?"

"Who knew the past would follow us so far, years collapsing like an ancient accordion, scraps of memory tucked like torn photographs into the sockets of our eyes?"

"Remember the splintered staccato of bullets against rock, the way dust rose in the stunned aftershock of silence?"

"We learned to let our faces hide our selves, to speak our story in a private tongue, the past a shadow in our bones."

"No matter how far you've come, remember: the starting line is always closer than you think."

"soon syllables will fall from her lips the first rain"

"how a word transforms us seedling taking delicate hold or a weed choking the tender plants news enters us and puts down roots"

"These words are the weight cupped in our palms: the small broken note of freedom."

"Part of it hides behind the headlines where this shard of the story will never be told."

"وَنَحْنُ نُحِبُّ الحَيَاةَ إذَا مَا اسْتَطَعْنَا إِلَيْهَا سَبِيلاَ وَنَرْقُصُ بَيْنَ شَهِيدْينِ نَرْفَعُ مِئْذَنَةً لِلْبَنَفْسَجِ بَيْنَهُمَا أَوْ نَخِيلاَ نُحِبُّ الحَيَاةَ إِذَا مَا اسْتَطَعْنَا إِلَيْهَا سَبِيلاَ"

"My father would read Darwish to me when I was a child and translate it because, in those days, there were not many translations of him. My father would read other poetry and translate it for me, and I just loved it. I loved everything about it: the metaphors, the passion, the care, the tenderness, the flowing quality of the lines. I eventually met Darwish, and he would ask me to read his poems in English; he didn’t like to read his poems in English at all. He read in Arabic, and just getting to be with him was such a landmark in my lifetime’s experience...I felt them [poets] as a wellspring of the spirit of Palestine, and the love and the care for Palestine—that is something that the media often finds easy to overlook. It’s just so insulting—versus the poetry which is so respectful, passionate, loving, and nostalgic."

"When you prepare your breakfast, think upon others Do not forget to feed the pigeons When you engage in your wars, think upon others Do not forget those who demand peace As you pay your water bill, think upon others Who seek sustenance from the clouds, not a tap And when you return home – to your house – think upon others Such as those who live in tents When you fall asleep counting planets, think upon others Who cannot find a place to sleep And as you search for meaning with fancy metaphors, think upon others Who have lost their right to speak And when you think of others, far away, think of yourself And say: I am a candle in the darkness"

"We will become a people, if we want to, when we learn that we are not angels, and that evil is not the prerogative of others We will become a people when we stop reciting a prayer of thanksgiving to the sacred nation every time a poor man finds something to eat for his dinner We will become a people when we can sniff out the sultan’s gatekeeper and the sultan without a trial We will become a people when a poet writes an erotic description of a dancer’s belly We will become a people when we forget what the tribe tells us, when the individual recognises the importance of small details We will become a people when a writer can look up at the stars without saying: ‘Our country is loftier and more beautiful!’ We will become a people when the morality police protect a prostitute from being beaten up in the streets We will become a people when the Palestinian only remembers his flag on the football pitch, at camel races, and on the day of the Nakba We will become a people, if we want to, when the singer is allowed to chant a verse of Surat al-Rahman at a mixed wedding reception We will become a people when we respect the right, and the wrong."

"Interviewer: I know that the comparison between the Jewish fate and the Palestinian fate bothers you, because it hints at a kind of “contest” over who is the greater victim. Darwish: First of all, this comparison doesn’t bother me as long as we are speaking from a place of literary concern. In this domain, nationalism doesn’t exist. I think that this neurosis about whether or not one should accept the comparison will be resolved along with peace. The Jew won’t be ashamed to find the Arab element within him, and the Arab won’t be ashamed to acknowledge that he is also composed of Jewish elements. Especially when speaking about “Eretz Israel” in Hebrew and "Palestine" in Arabic. I am a son of all the cultures that have passed through the land—the Greek, the Roman, the Persian, the Jewish, the Ottoman. A presence that exists at the very core of my language. Every powerful culture passed through and left something. I am the son of all these fathers, but I belong to one mother. Does that mean that my mother is a prostitute? My mother is this earth; she received all of them. She was both a witness and a victim. I am also the son of the Jewish culture that was in Palestine. That’s why I don’t recoil from the comparison. But because of the political tension—which says that if Israel is here the Palestinians must be absent, and that if the Palestinians are here then Israel must be absent—we haven’t accepted the fact that we are the products of similar conditions and have competed with each other over who is the greater victim."

"What is a homeland? It is a place that enables people to blossom, and not a place in which people serve the flag. In my poem, Cease-fire with the Mongolians, I say that I am going to make socks out of the flag. My life's work is not on behalf of a flag."

"I encouraged the leadership in its time of weakness. Now that they are strong, I'm allowed not to applaud. If a Palestinian state is established, I will be in the opposition. That's my natural place."

"Only culture is a guarantee of true peace."

"In my last book I said: “I have one dream: to find a dream.” A dream is a piece of the sky found in everyone. We can’t be boundlessly realistic or pragmatic. We are in need of the sky."

"I don't know what I want. Exile is so strong within me I may bring it to the land."

"The sea is the obsession of the poet, because the first poetic rhythm, or the first sense of poetic rhythm, was born of the motion of the waves."

"My poems do not deliver mere images and metaphors; but deliver landscapes, villages and fields, deliver a place. It makes that which is absent from geography present in its form, that is, able to reside in the poetic text, as if residing on his land. I don’t think that a poet is entitled to a greater happiness than that some people seek refuge in his lines of poetry, as if they were real houses. Indeed, in Arabic, there is a nice and unusual homonymy. Both the poetic verse and the house are said “bayt.” As if a man can reside there."

"I have the wisdom of one condemned to death: I own nothing for anything to own me"

"لو يذكرُ الزيتون غارسَهُ لصار الزيت دمعا"

"[T]hinking, thinking and thinking. My heart not feeling that which my mind thought, nor my mind ceasing to dominate my soul, and every thought like a hard block of lumber."

"The sword and the pen Not talking nor quarreling Are our symbols Our glory and covenant And a duty to fulfill it Shake us Our honor Is an honorable cause A raised flag O, your beauty In your eminence Victorious over your enemies My homeland My homeland."