Remembering Mahmoud Darwish

[Lucid_Chaotic]

I don’t know how many here would know of his works, but as a kid growing up in the Middle East, I had the fortune to read some of his poems. A Palestinian by ethnicity, his literary work epitomized themes of birth and resurrection, of deprivation and exile.

In his own words - “Exile is not a geographical situation, I take it with me everywhere, just as I take my homeland, a land of words”.

Edward Said once said that Darwish’s poems are “an epic effort to transform the lyrics of loss into the indefinitely postponed drama of return.”

Mahmoud Darwish died this weekend at the age of 67… he was well known and loved across the Arab world.

RIP Mahmoud Darwish – Inna Lillahi Wa Inna Ilayhi Raajioon.

[Kevyan]

Indeed he was the Essential Breath of the Palestinian people, the eloquent witness of exile and belonging..

see this...

I Belong There

     ***
              I belong there. I have many memories. I was born as everyone is born.

I have a mother, a house with many windows, brothers, friends, and a prison cell

with a chilly window! I have a wave snatched by seagulls, a panorama of my own.

I have a saturated meadow. In the deep horizon of my word, I have a moon,

a bird's sustenance, and an immortal olive tree.

I have lived on the land long before swords turned man into prey.

I belong there. When heaven mourns for her mother, I return heaven to

her mother.

And I cry so that a returning cloud might carry my tears.

To break the rules, I have learned all the words needed for a trial by blood.

I have learned and dismantled all the words in order to draw from them a

single word: Home. ***

From Unfortunately, It Was Paradise by Mahmoud Darwish translated and Edited by Munir Akash and Carolyn Forché with Sinan Antoon and Amira El-Zein.