Mahmoud Darwish - Eleven Stars Over Andalusia
On our last evening on this land we chop our days
from our young trees, count the ribs we’ll take with us
and the ribs we’ll leave behind… On the last evening
we bid nothing farewell, nor find the time to end…
Everything remains as it is, it is the place that changes our dreams
and its visitors. Suddenly we’re incapable of irony,
this land will now host atoms of dust… Here, on our last evening,
we look closely at the mountains besieging the clouds: a conquest… and a counter-conquest,
and an old time handing this new time the keys to our doors.
So enter our houses, conquerors, and drink the wine
of our mellifluous Mouwashah. We are the night at midnight,
and no horseman will bring dawn from the sanctuary of the last Call to Prayer…
Our tea is green and hot; drink it. Our pistachios are fresh; eat them.
The beds are of green cedar, fall on them,
following this long siege, lie down on the feathers of
our dreams. The sheets are crisp, perfumes are ready by the door, and there are plenty of mirrors:
enter them so we may exit completely. Soon we will search
in the margins of your history, in distant countries,
for what was once our history. And in the end we will ask ourselves:
Was Andalusia here or there? On the land…or in the poem?
Mahmoud Darwish - Addresses for the Soul, outside This Place
I love to travel . . .
to a village that never hangs my last evening on its cypresses. I love the trees
that witnessed how two birds suffered at our hands, how we raised the stones.
Wouldn't it be better if we raised our days
to grow slowly and embrace this greenness? I love the rainfall
on the women of distant meadows.
I love the glittering water and the scent of stone.
Wouldn't it be better if we defied our ages
and gazed much longer at the last sky before moonset?
Addresses for the soul, outside this place. I love to travel
to any wind . . . But I don't love to arrive.
Mahmoud Darwish - We Travel Like All People
We travel like everyone else, but we return to nothing. As if travel were
a path of clouds. We buried our loved ones in the shade of clouds and
between roots of trees.
We said to our wives: Give birth for hundreds of years, so that we may end
this journey
within an hour of a countr)\ within a meter of the impossible!
We travel in the chariots of the Psalms, sleep in the tents of the prophets,
and are born again in the language of Gypsies.
We measure space with a hoopoe's beak, and sing so that distance may forget us.
We cleanse the moonlight. Your road is long, so dream of seven women to bear
this long journey on your shoulders. Shake the trunks of palm trees for them.
You know the names, and which one will give birth to the Son of Galilee.
Ours is a country of words: Talk. Talk. Let me rest my road against a stone.
Ours is a country of words: Talk. Talk. Let me see an end to this journey.