Birds die in Galilee

Birds die in Galilee

Mahmoud Darwish Translated by: Denys Johnson-Davies/The Music of Human Flesh. -We shall meet awhile After a year After two years And generation… And she threw into the camera Twenty gardens And the birds of Galilee And continued searching beyond the sea For a new meaning to truth. -My homeland is clothes-lines For the handkerchiefs of blood Shed every minute. And I stretched out on the shore As sands and palm trees. She does not know… O Rita! Death and I granted you The secret of joy wilting at the customs gate And we were rejuvenated, Death and I, In your first front And in window of your house. Death and I are two faces- Why now do you flee from my face, Why now do you flee? Why now do you flee from What makes wheat the earth’s eyelashes, from What makes the volcano another face to jasmine? Why now do you flee? Nothing used to tire me at night but her silence When it was stretching out before the door Like the street, like the old quarter. Let it be what you want, Rita: The silence an axe Or frame for stars Or a climate for the tree’s labour pains. I sip kisses From the blade of knives. Come, let’s join the massacre! Like unwanted leaves The flocks of birds fell Into the wells of time. And I pick up the blue wings. Rita, I am he in whose skin The shackles etch A likeness of the homeland. Zajel / An-Najah National University