Mahmoud Darwish who I've witten about previously https://teifidancer-teifidancer.blogspot.com/2010/01/mahmoud-darwish-poet-of-resistance.html was a widely known and popular Palestinian poet whose work I greatly admire.. He was born in Berweh, a village east of Acre, Palestine, in 1942.
When the Israelis occupied his home in 1948, Darwish began to experience many forms of oppression. He grew up as a refugee, his village was destroyed, and between 1961 and 1967 he was arrested by the Israelis five times, once for writing "Identity Card," a poem which became a rallying cry for the Palestinian movement. Early in life, Darwish became politically active through his poetry and involvement in the Israeli Communist Party, Rakah. He spent a period as the editor of Rakah's newspaper, Al-Ittihad (Unity).
Darwish's political advocacy brought him a great deal of negative Israeli attention, which included harassment and house arrest. Finally, in 1971, after years of hardship, Darwish left Israel and fled into exile in Beirut, Lebanon. By this time, he had established and upheld an outstanding reputation as one of the leading poets of the resistance.
Many of his poems have been converted to music in order to fuel the Palestinian defiance.Considered Palestine's most eminent poet, Darwish published his first collection of poems, Leaves of Olives, in 1964, when he was 22. Since then, Darwish has published approximately thirty poetry and prose collections which have been translated into more than twenty-two languages. Sadly there is no comprehensive collection of his poetry in English, though there is a good selection of poems from the 1980s and 1990s under the title Unfortunately, It Was Paradise (2013), as well as The Butterfly’s Burden, which brings together three short volumes of poems from 1998-2003. (Copper Canyon Press, 2006), Stage of Siege (2002), The Adam of Two Edens (2001), Mural (2000), Bed of the Stranger (1999), Psalms (1995), Why Did You Leave the Horse Alone? (1994), and The Music of Human Flesh (1980). Appropriately, then, to gain a broad view of Darwish’s output people have to piece together scattered publications from several countries, in books, journals, and newspapers. As Darwish says in “You’ll Be Forgotten, As If You Never Were,” a late poem in The Butterfly’s Burden, “I am the king of echo. My only throne is the margin.”
Darwish was an editor for a Palestine Liberation Organization monthly journal and the director of the group's research center. In 1987 he was appointed to the PLO executive committee, and resigned in 1993 in opposition to the Oslo Agreement. He served as the editor-in-chief and founder of the literary review Al-Karmel, published out of the Sakakini Centre since 1997
About Darwish's work, the poet Naomi Shihab Nye has said, "Mahmoud Darwish is the Essential Breath of the Palestinian people, the eloquent witness of exile and belonging, exquisitely tuned singer of images that invoke, link, and shine a brilliant light into the world's whole heart. What he speaks has been embraced by readers around the world—his in an utterly necessary voice, unforgettable once discovered."
His awards and honors include the Ibn Sina Prize, the Lenin Peace Prize, the 1969 Lotus prize from the Union of Afro-Asian Writers, France's Knight of Arts and Belles Lettres medal in 1997, the 2001 Prize for Cultural Freedom from the Lannan Foundation, the Moroccan Wissam of intellectual merit handed to him by King Mohammad VI of Morocco, and the USSR's Stalin Peace Prize.
He died twelve years ago in 2008, in Houston, Texas due to complications from heart surgery. but Darwish’s words continue today to play an important role in shaping the identity of diaspora Palestinians. His celebrated poms have always connected Palestinians to their homeland. But for those living in the West they have become psalms of the tragic, human dimensions of the Palestinian cause.
Darwish wrote the following poem in 1988 during the first intifada and the direct and uncompromising words caused a great stir in Israel. Israel’s then Prime Minister, Yitzhak Shamir, quoted the poem in the Israeli Knesset to “prove” that the PLO posed a threat to existence of the Zionist state. In response, Darwish said that he found it “difficult to believe that the most militarily powerful country in the Middle East is threatened by a poem”.
Those Who Pass Between Fleeting Words - Mahmoud Darwish
O those who pass between fleeting words
Carry your names, and be gone
Rid our time of your hours, and be gone
Steal what you will from the blueness of the sea and the sand of memory
Take what pictures you will, so that you understand
That which you never will:
How a stone from our land builds the ceiling of our sky.
O those who pass between fleeting words
From you the sword — from us the blood
From you steel and fire — from us our flesh
From you yet another tank — from us stones
From you tear gas — from us rain
Above us, as above you, are sky and air
So take your share of our blood — and be gone
Go to a dancing party — and be gone
As for us, we have to water the martyrs’ flowers
As for us, we have to live as we see fit.
O those who pass between fleeting words
As bitter dust, go where you wish, but
Do not pass between us like flying insects
For we have work to do in our land:
We have wheat to grow which we water with our bodies’ dew
We have that which does not please you here:
Stones or partridges
So take the past, if you wish, to the antiquities market
And return the skeleton to the hoopoe, if you wish,
On a clay platter
We have that which does not please you: we have the future
And we have things to do in our land.
O those who pass between fleeting words
Pile your illusions in a deserted pit, and be gone
Return the hand of time to the law of the golden calf
Or to the time of the revolver’s music!
For we have that which does not please you here, so be gone
And we have what you lack: a bleeding homeland of a bleeding people
A homeland fit for oblivion or memory
O those who pass between fleeting words
It is time for you to be gone
Live wherever you like, but do not live among us
It is time for you to be gone
Die wherever you like, but do not die among us
For we have work to do in our land
We have the past here
We have the first cry of life
We have the present, the present and the future
We have this world here, and the hereafter
So leave our country
Our land, our sea
Our wheat, our salt, our wounds
Everything, and leave
The memories of memory
O those who pass between fleeting words!
—Translation from the Jerusalem Post, April 2, 1988
Links to two more poems by Mahmoud Darwish
https://teifidancer-teifidancer.blogspot.com/2015/03/to-our-land-mahmoud-darwish-13309.html
https://teifidancer-teifidancer.blogspot.com/2012/11/mahmoud-darwish-13341-9808-think-of.html
