August 09, 2009

Tribute to Mahmoud Darwish

" There’s on this land, the lady of lands, what is worth life"


I'm from There

I’m from there.
And have memories.
I was born like everybody else.
I have a mother And a house with plenty of windows .
I have brothers.
Friends and a jail with a cold window
I have a wave that was stolen by seagulls.
I have my own view.
I have an extra plant
And I have a moon at the extremes of speech,
and the birds food
And an eternal olive tree
I walked the land
before the swords had passed
over a body they turned into a table.
I’m from there.
Taking the sky back to her mother
when the sky cries over her mother
And I cry so that the returning cloud
could recognize me
I learnt all speech worthy of the blood court
to break the rule
I learnt all the language
and dismantled It
to make a single word
That is homeland…




Mahmoud Darwish


13 March 1941 – 9 August 2008


My own translation

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

“We visit what remains of life.
Life as it is, let us train ourselves to love the things
we had, to love things that are not ours
and ours.

If we look at them together from above,
like snow falling on the mountains,
the mountains may be as they were;
and the fields as they were;
and life, intuitive and communal.”

Anonymous said...

from "With the Mist So Dense on the Bridge" by Mahmoud Darwish