He dreams of white lilies, an olive branch, her breasts in evening blossom.
He dreams of a bird, he tells me, of lemon flowers.
He does not intellectualize about his dream. He understands things as he
senses and smells them.
Homeland for him, he tells me, is to drink my mother’s coffee, to return
at nightfall.
And the land? I don’t know the land, he said.
I don’t feel it in my flesh and blood, as they say in the poems.
Suddenly I saw the land as one sees a grocery store, a street, newspapers.
I asked him, but don’t you love the land? My love is a picnic, he said, a glass
of wine, a love affair.
- Would you die for the land?
- No!
All my attachment to the land is no more than a story or a fiery speech!
They taught me to love it, but I never felt it in my heart.
I never knew its roots and branches, or the scent of its grass.
- And what about its love? Did it burn like suns and desire?
He looked straight at me and said: I love it with my gun.
And by unearthing feasts in the garbage of the past
and a deaf-mute idol whose age and meaning are unknown.
He told me about the moment of departure, how his mother
silently wept when they led him to the front,
how her anguished voice gave birth to a new hope in his flesh
that doves might flock through the Ministry of War.
He drew on his cigarette. He said, as if fleeing from a swamp of blood,
I dreamt of white lilies, an olive branch, a bird embracing the dawn in a
lemon tree.
- And what did you see?
- I saw what I did:
a blood-red boxthorn.
I blasted them in the sand…in their chests…in their bellies.
- How many did you kill?
- It’s impossible to tell. I only got one medal.
Pained, I asked him to tell me about one of the dead.
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(Cont.)
ReplyDeleteHe shifted in his seat, fiddled with the folded newspaper,
then said, as if breaking into song:
He collapsed like a tent on stones, embracing shattered planets.
His high forehead was crowned with blood. His chest was empty of medals.
He was not a well-trained fighter, but seemed instead to be a peasant, a
worker or a peddler.
Like a tent he collapsed and died, his arms stretched out like dry creek-beds.
When I searched his pockets for a name, I found two photographs, one of his
wife, the other of his daughter.
Did you feel sad? I asked.
Cutting me off, he said, Mahmoud, my friend,
sadness is a white bird that does not come near a battlefield.
Soldiers commit a sin when they feel sad.
I was there like a machine spitting hellfire and death,
turning space into a black bird.
He told me about his first love, and later, about distant streets,
about reactions to the war in the heroic radio and the press.
As he hid a cough in his handkerchief I asked him:
Shall we meet again?
Yes, but in a city far away.
When I filled his fourth glass, I asked jokingly:
Are you off? What about the homeland?
Give me a break, he replied.
I dream of white lilies, streets of song, a house of light.
I need a kind heart, not a bullet.
I need a bright day, not a mad, fascist moment of triumph.
I need a child to cherish a day of laughter, not a weapon of war.
I came to live for rising suns, not to witness their setting.
He said goodbye and went looking for white lilies,
a bird welcoming the dawn on an olive branch.
He understands things only as he senses and smells them.
Homeland for him, he said, is to drink my mother’s coffee, to return safely,
at nightfall. <span>
</span>
<span style="color: #808080;">Poor Darwish</span>
ReplyDeleteThe poem elicited ferociously polarized reactions, Mr. Darwish said: “The secretary general of the Israeli Communist Party said: `How come Darwish writes such a poem? Is he asking us to leave the country to become peace lovers?’ And Arabs said, `How dare you humanize the Israeli soldier.’ ”
http://arabist.net/archives/2007/04/21/representing-the-other-and-oneself/
It is said when one enters the battlefield his mind is filled with home, and what would be considered the smallest of things grows large. Like when one things of a tree or a bush near his home, you see the leaf and it is green and sparkles with life like never before. The brook nearby takes on a life of its own, it speaks with the many voices of nature and love, as it feeds the surrounding terrain. Sometimes you smell things, familar smells if but for an instant, a perfume, a flower, a home cooked meal. It is only these matters that pull you through another day.
ReplyDelete<span>It is said when one enters the battlefield his mind is filled with home, and what would be considered the smallest of things grows large. Like when one thinks of a tree or a bush near his home - a visual image, you see the leaf and it is green and sparkles with life like never before. The brook nearby takes on a life of its own, it speaks with the many voices of nature and love, as it feeds the surrounding terrain. Sometimes you smell things, familar smells if but for an instant, a perfume, a flower, a home cooked meal. It is only these matters that pull you through another day</span>
ReplyDeletei never really get poetry. can someone decipher this for me?
ReplyDeleteJust read it yasmin without thinking of it being anything different from prose. It's not unlike music in the sense that its "meaning" is in the mood verbally transmitted..It addresses emotions and feelings as much if not more, rational thought..When a great poet like the late Mohammad el Maghoot says :
ReplyDelete"In my mouth there's another mouth
and amongst my teeth, other teeth"..
He expresses alienation and the feeling that he's a stranger to his own mind and body without explaining it rationally.
I can go on for hours but unfortunaly I have to go..
As for deciphering Darweesh's poem itself, this has to be for tomorrow unless someone else more into poetry than yourself would..V, r.s and vza are very much into it I guess.
ReplyDelete<span style="font-family: Tahoma; ">Over the years, Mr. Darwish said he had come to view exile in philosophical terms. "Exile is more than a geographical concept," he said. "You can be an exile in your homeland, in your own house, in a room. It's not simply a Palestinian question. Can I say I'm addicted to exile? Maybe."
ReplyDeleteIt has been both cruel and kind, depriving him of his home but nourishing his art, he said. "Isn't exile one of the sources of literary creation throughout history?" he said. "The man who is in harmony with his society, his culture, with himself, cannot be a creator."
"And that would be true," he added. "Even if our country were Eden itself."</span>
http://www.mahmouddarwish.com/english/articles.htm
<span style="font-family: Tahoma; ">Darwish has called the conflict a "struggle between two memories". His poems challenged the Zionist tenet, embodied in such poetry as Haim Bialik's, of "a land without a people for a people without a land". While he admires the Hebrew poet Yehuda Amichai, "his poetry put a challenge to me, because we write about the same place. He wants to use the landscape and history for his own benefit, based on my destroyed identity. So we have a competition: who is the owner of the language of this land? Who loves it more? Who writes it better?"
ReplyDeleteHe adds: "Poetry and beauty are always making peace. When you read something beautiful you find coexistence; it breaks walls down... I always humanise the other. I even humanised the Israeli soldier," which he did in poems such as "A Soldier Who Dreams of White Lilies", written just after the 1967 war. Many Arabs criticised the poem, but he says: "I will continue to humanise even the enemy... </span>
<p><span style="font-family: Tahoma; ">
The first teacher who taught me Hebrew was a Jew. The first love affair in my life was with a Jewish girl. The first judge who sent me to prison was a Jewish woman. So from the beginning, I didn't see Jews as devils or angels but as human beings." Several poems are to Jewish lovers. "These poems take the side of love not war," he says. </span>
<p>
<p>http://www.mahmouddarwish.com/english/Maya.htm
And Jemmy of course.. Joe too etc..
ReplyDelete