Ugh. I just learned from Theriomorph in comments that Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish has also passed on. Theriomorph is right. This has been a bad weekend for art.
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 honor 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.
A poem, “I Belong There”, from the Academy of American Poets. Translated by Carolyn Forché and Munir Akash.
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.
May you rest in peace, Mr. Darwish.
*disintegrates into tears*
I love this poem. And look at that beautiful picture of him you found.
I hadn’t realized Carolyn Forche had translated his work; her Against Forgetting might have been the first place I encountered Darwish’s writing in the mid-’90′s. I just pulled the (amazing) collection off the shelf, sitting here thinking about him, and rediscovered these words:
from “Earth Poem”
…
And they searched his chest
But could only find his heart
And they searched his heart
But could only find his people
And they searched his voice
But could only find his grief
And they searched his grief
But could only find his prison
And they searched his prison
But could only see themselves in chains.
Complications following heart surgery indeed.
Goodbye, Mr. Darwish, and thank you.
Yes, I have Against Forgetting as well. I’m about to go dig it out now!