http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2008/08/10/news/Obit-Darwish.php
From: Beirut in Modern Arabic Poetry, an Anthology
An apple for the sea, marble narcissus flower
Stone butterfly, Beirut
Shape of the soul in a mirror
Description of the first woman, smell of early mist
Beirut is built of gold and fatigue
Of Andalusia and Damascus
Silver, seafoam, bequests of earth in the plumage of doves
Death of a cornstalk
Vagrancy of a fugitive star between my love and me
Beirut--I did not hear my blood before I uttered
The name of a mistress
Who sleeps across my blood, who sleeps
*******
Captives we are in this flabby age
Invaders have delivered us up to our kin
No sooner had we gripped the earth than our protector
Pounced on our weedings and memory
So we distributed our songs among the sentries
We found nothing to indicate our identity
Except our blood that climbs the walls and in secret
We sing:
Beirut our tent
Beirut our star
...Beirut the shape of shade...
She tempts us with a thousand overtures
And with new alphabets
Beirut our only tent
Beirut our only star
******
A grey horizon scatters in the distance
Circle paths of mother-of-pearl, not roads
And from Hell to the Atlantic
From the Gulf to Hell right left and center
I saw nothing but a scaffold
With one single rope for two million necks
I see armed cities of paper that bristle
With kings and khaki
******
I see cities crowning their conquereors
And the East sometimes is the opposite of the West
Sometimes the East of the West
Its image and commodity
I see cities crowning their conquerors
Exporting martyrs in order to import whiskey
And the latest thing in sex and torture
******
I see cities that hang their lovers over branches of iron
And drive away the names at dawn
At dawn the guardian of the only idol comes
With a million keys and one scaffold
What are we leaving if not a prison
What have the prisoners got to lose?
We walk toward a distant song
A first freedom
We sense the world's enchantment for the first time
The dawn is blue
And the air can be seen and eaten like figs
Is Beirut a mirror that we can break
To enter into the fragments
Or are we mirrors for the drizzle to shatter?
Beirut, markets hung over the sea
An economy that destroys production
To build hotels and restaurants
A government in a street or an apartment
A coffee bar that turns like the sunflower to the sun
Description of departure and free beauty
Paradise of documents
A seat in the plumage of a bird
Mountains that bow to the sea
A sea that ascends to the mountains
A deer slain by the wings of a sparrow
And a people that do not like the shade
*****
We burned our boats and hung our stars over the outer walls
We did not search for our ancestors in the family trees
We did not travel further than pure bread and our clothes of mud
To the mother-of-pearl of ancient lakes we sent no pictures of our fathers
We were not born asking...
We were born every which way
Spread like ants over a mat of straw
Then we became horses that pull carriages
We who stand in the line of fire
We have burned our boats and embraced our rifles
We shall awaken this land that rested on our blood
And extract our fallen victims from its cells
We shall wash their hair clean with our white tears
Pour over their hands the milk of the soul
******
We who stand in the line of fire declare:
Until the night shall pass We are in the trenches
Beirut eternal we gaze upon the sands
In the beginning we were not created
In the beginning was the word
And now in the trenches
A birth is being prepared
******
A moon shattered over the bench of darkness
Beirut is a lily of rubble
A first kiss
Eulogy of the Zanzalakht tree
Cloaks for the sea and the slain
Roofs for the stars and the tents
Stone poem
Collision between two nightingales hidden in the heart
A bereft sky
Thinking on a stone
A rose that can be heard, Beirut
A voice that separates the victim from the sword
A little boy who flung away the regulations and commands
And the mirrors---
Then fell asleep
Translated by Lena Jayyusi and Christopher Middleton
4 comments:
ALLAH (SWT) yer7amou.
Mahmoud Darwish was one of my favorite Arab poets. Anoher great lost for the Arabs.
I come from There,
I come from there and I have memories
Born as mortals are, I have a mother
And a house with many windows,
I have brothers, friends,
And a prison cell with a cold window.
Mine is the wave, snatched by sea-gulls,
I have my own view,
And an extra blade of grass.
Mine is the moon at the far edge of the words,
And the bounty of birds,
And the immortal olive tree.
I walked this land before the swords
Turned its living body into a laden table.
I come from there. I render the sky unto her mother,
When the sky weeps for her mother.
And I weep to make myself known
To a returning cloud.
I learnt all the words worthy of the court of blood,
So that I could break the rule.
I learnt all the words and broke them up,
To make a single word: Homeland....
And those who just stood and watched, will face a similar day, when they will say - I came from There, once, a long time ago...
:)
Yes...he is one of the greatest poets to have ever written a poem. It is only too bad that most in the English speaking world cannot enjoy his rich use of allegory and metaphor.
"Paradise of documents"...ah. Only a true Lebanese spirit can appreciate the Franco-Turkish rituals of getting something through the offices of the government. Or the governments in each and every house...each tribe with its own wastah. But the all time best line is gold and fatigue because if there are two things that constitute the Stone Butterfly it is those two things.
Adonis is equally great. His poem New York is quite frankly, prophetic in the way it sees the Babylon that is our particular one...
My husband used to read Adonis to me from the Friday newspapers. He'd translate in layman's terms and I'd formulate what the English poetic equivalence would be. I'd really love to translate his work someday into English with my husband as my partner.
One day. When I am able to return to the fig tree on the family estate in Haris. One day. In'sha'allah.
Thanks for returning sister.
Adonis. Hmmm. I'll have to read some of his writings, insha'ALLAH :)
I love anything by Dr. Ali Shariati. My persian friend translated some of his books into English.
Have you heard of Dr. Mostafa Chamran (a friend of Dr. Ali Shariati)? Another amazing character. Unfortunately there aren't any books of his that I know about that have been translated into English, so we'll either have to learn Farsi or wait until my friend translates one insha'ALLAH :)
Here is an excerpt from Mostafa Chamran's diary:
Dear Lord, until when shall I burn? Until when must I suffer? In every state and every place you witnessed the pure love I had which I always attributed to your sacred holiness. But that love eventually burnt my soul into ashes. I feel I will burn for all eternity. I will become a burning candle for all of humanity to benifit from my flame...
Dear Lord, what is my goal in life? The world does not satisfy me. I see people running in every direction, working in toil to reach a certain point they have focused on...
But dear Lord, I am dispassionate about their ways, even though I work more than they do, even though I sacrifice my night's rest and my day's recreation for my work. but the result does not please me...
I only do this as a responsibility to fulfil my role in the daily toil of life, and do not expect an answer!
Ah...I haven't heard of them. And so few are translated into English including the works of the Sayyeds like Fadallah whom I hear is a tremendous poet besides being a phenomenal leader and sheikh. What is written in this is true...I cannot write of such things...they are simply too dark and too difficult to put into words.
Adunis is Syrian and is considered by some to be the greatest living poet of our times. He revolutionized the practice of poetry and in some sense of the word, his work mirrors what was happening in the 60's and 70's in the West. His masterpiece..if you ask me...is A Grave for New York. In that long prose "like" piece, he sounds a bit like Walt Whitman (in fact he directs part of the poem directly to him) and he chronicles Harlem and Madison Avenue, the Empire State building, Lincoln Center, etc.:
"I repeated thse proverbs and aphorisms, as Arabs do, in Wall Street, where rivers of gold of all colors pour in, flowing from their sources. And among them I saw the Arab rivers carrying millions of torn limbs of victims and offerings to the master idol. And between one victim and another the boatmen laugh out loud, as they tumble down from the Chrysler Building and return to the source."
..he goes on and on like that and ends with:
X.
And so,
I carry Cuba on my shoulders and ask in New York: When will Castro arrive?
Between Cairo and Damascus I wait on the road leading...
Guevara met Freedom, entered into the bed of Time with her, and they slept. When he woke up, he did not find her. He left sleep and entered the dream.
In Berkeley, in Beirut and the rest of the cells, where everything prepares to become everything.
...
But,
Peace be to the rose of darkness and sands,
Peace be to Beirut.
....And peace be to the South.
Thanks sister. I think what "non" muslims miss in many of these Arab poets is the linkage to Islamic culture. Not that all of these poets like Adonis, Darwish were actually practicing muslims...many are not. However...the thread of Quran runs through all of Arabic literature...and how could it not! The beauty that is established in the Quran...well. The Arab poets would be crazy to ignore that simply because they don't have faith. Or have luke warm faith.
Non muslim readers cannot possibly cherish those references in modern Arabic poetry. And if they want to then I guess they will have to read the Quran first prior to sitting as critics for any major or minor Arab poet.
I hope all is well with you....I noticed the attack in Tripoli. When will it ever end sister? That is the burning for some of us. And for others? We know it will.
Peace
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