I Shall Return |
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 Samih Al- Qassem , I lament the land of my birth, The spot of beauty on this earth; But nobody hears my lamentation, Though I wall across all creation! I am rejected, deprived, compelled To roam everywhere, exiled, expelled: I walk the streets of every town; I am denied, and left to drown. They deny me the air, the water, the shade, And want me to vanish, to die, to fade: They have plundered my plough and furrow And even the hope of a fruitful tomorrow; But although everything seems to burn, No force on earth shall hinder my return! |
Jan 10, 2010
I Shall Return
I Shall Never Cry
I Shall Never Cry |
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 Fadwa Touqan At the gates of And on the ruins did I come to cry Yet I stood in silence and in shame, Receiving remonstration and blame From the loved ones who did stay, And never thought of going away! 0 dear loved Ones, at thy feet I creep, To learn faith, rather than to weep, To be guided by the glowing lamp, And my eyelids shall never be damp: How shall be defeated by despair When thy courage fills the throbbing air; Thy strength resembles the mountain. Inspiring me, steady like a fountain! |
I am Jenin
I am Jenin |
 Nancy Hook I am Jenin and my heart aches with the taste of fear, the smell of vanquishing hatred,, blood spilled and smeared in the toy-strewn rubble, puddled in the dust of where I used to live. I am and I still hold in my hand the keys to my father’s empty ransacked home. I am but my children’s’ bellies are distended with hunger, Their eyes huge with anger and fear. I am I am the sun swept hillsides and beloved valleys no longer grazed. My orchards and olive groves have been plowed under and destroyed, My shrines desecrated, my women raped, My men humiliated and killed, My children, -- oh my children! I am raped, Waiting on her once-golden hillside For The one who speaks of Justice and Love. Abandoned, alone, I speak out but the world hears neither my screams, nor my cries nor my reasoned pleadings for justice and common sense if not Mercy. Desperate, enraged, I strike out and am further condemned. My soul is battered but not broken, my hope is shaken but not shattered. (I watch heartsick from afar helpless, tearfully, endlessly pleading that the rulers of my beloved country would do the right thing which they refuse to do.) (Jenin, I share not your blood, and dwell in the land of your oppressors but my soul, oh my soul, is of you, Jenin, is broken for you, (I look out on my hillside, lush, verdant, alive – and I see the scars where once was your world.) Our Lord, the same Lord, Whom we worship in different ways, has not forgotten you, Palestine. He does not abandon His own. Your crowded multitudes will persevere and will yet prevail! I am Jenin and my birds shall sing once more, my orchards and flocks will rise from the ashes, and my cities will hum with the bustle of many peoples. Our God, God of the Oppressed and the Oppressors, will bring Justice, and Peace, His Love will prevail and I shall return to my home. I am a middle-aged Christian American woman who supports your cause. My husband and I speak neither Arabic nor Hebrew, but follow the English-language press daily and are sickened by what we learn. We write letters weekly, and are endlessly frustrated with our country’s leaders. But, because it is our country, your blood is on our hands, too, and we are deeply sorrowful and ashamed. As believers in the same God, your cause is our cause and we, too, are presently helpless. But just as Martin Luther King and Mohandas Gandhi ultimately prevailed, by shaming those who currently have no shame, we deeply believe that, somehow, with God’s Grace, you will regain your homeland. Please accept this poem – it is from my heart. I hope that by writing it – by expressing to you my deepest feelings as one who bleeds for you and with you, but is not of you and therefore cannot possibly know the true depths of your feelings – I have not in some unknown way offended you. |
Homeland
Homeland |
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 Mahmoud Darwish Translated by: Denys Johnson-Davies/The Music of Human Flesh. Suspend me on the tresses of a date palm. Hand me-I shall not betray the palm. This land is mine and long ago, In good mood and in bad, I’d milk the camels. My homeland is no bundle of legends. It is not a memory, not a field of crescent moons. My homeland is not some story or anthem, Not light on the boughs of some jasmine bush. My homeland is the anger of the exile at being made to grieve, A child wanting festivities and a kiss. And winds confined within a prison cell, An old man mourning his sons, his field. This land is the skin on my bones, And my heart Flies above its grasses like a bee. Suspend me on the tresses of date palm. Hand me-I shall not betray the palm. |
Here We Shall Stay
Here We Shall Stay |
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 Tawfiq Zayyad As though we were twenty impossibilities In Lydda, Ramla, and Here we shall stay Like a brick wall upon your breast And in your throat Like a splinter of glass, like spiky cactus And in your eyes A chaos of fire. Here we shall stay Like a wall upon your breast Washing dishes in idle, buzzing bars Pouring drinks for our overlords Scrubbing floors in blackened kitchens To snatch a crumb for our children From between your blue fangs. Here we shall stay A hard wall on your breast. We hunger Have no clothes We defy Sing our songs Sweep the sick streets with our angry dances Saturate the prisons with dignity and pride Keep on making children One revolutionary generation After another AS though we were twenty impossibilities In Lydda, Ramla, and Galilee! Here we shall stay. Do your worst. WE guard the shade Of olive and fig. We blend ideas Like yeast in dough. Our nerves are packed with ice And hellfire warms our heart. If we get thirsty We'll squeeze the rocks. If we get hungry We'll eat dirt And never leave. Our blood is pure But we shall not hoard it. Our past lies before us Our present inside us Our future on our backs. As though we were twenty impossibilities In Lydda, Ramla and O living roots hold fast And--still--reach deep in the earth. It is better for the oppressor To correct his accounts Before the pages riffle back "To every deed..."--listen To what the Book says. |
Hands off Our People
Hands off Our People |
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 Tawfiq Zaiyyad Hands off our people, whose holy ire Can only explode and blaze the fire: How can you live on a ship and antagonize An ocean of flames, that will surprise You with a devastating conflagration ? We tell you that our vigilant nation Shall never succumb to savage repression, Nor to you; acts of plunder and aggression! We do not slaughter, loot or pillage, Nor prowl the streets of e very village: Nor do we harass, torture, or blackmail, Nor do we make innocent people wail, And then fill our ears with cotton and mud; Because we do not feed on flesh and blood! |
Hadeel’s Song
Hadeel’s Song |
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 By Hanan Ashrawi Some words are hard to pronounce He-li-cop-ter is most vexing (A-pa-che or Co-bra is impossible) But how it can stand still in the sky I cannot understand— What holds it up What bears its weight (Not clouds, I know) It sends a flashing light—so smooth-- It makes a deafening sound The house shakes (There are holes in the wall by my bed) Flash-boom-light-sound— And I have a hard time sleeping (I felt ashamed when I wet my bed, but no one scolded me). Plane—a word much easier to say— It flies, tayyara, My mother told me A word must have a meaning A name must have a meaning Like mine, (Hadeel, the cooing of the dove) Tanks, though, make a different sound They shudder when they shoot Dabbabeh is a heavy word As heavy as its meaning. Hadeel—the dove—she coos Tayyara—she flies Dabbabeh—she crawls My Mother—she cries And cries and cries My Brother—Rami—he lies DEAD And lies and lies, his eyes Closed. Hit by a bullet in the head (bullet is a female lead—rasasa—she kills, my pencil is a male lead—rasas—he writes) What’s the difference between a shell and a bullet? (What’s five-hundred-milli-meter- Or eight-hundred-milli-meter-shell?) Numbers are more vexing than words— I count to ten, then ten-and-one, ten-and-two But what happens after ten-and-ten, How should I know? Rami, my brother, was one Of hundreds killed— They say thousands are hurt, But which is more A hundred or a thousand (miyyeh or alf) I cannot tell— So big--so large--so huge— Too many, too much. Palestine—Falasteen—I’m used to, It’s not so hard to say, It means we’re here—to stay-- Even though the place is hard On kids and mothers too For soldiers shoot And airplanes shell And tanks boom And tear gas makes you cry (Though I don’t think it’s tear gas that makes my mother cry) I’d better go and hug her Sit in her lap a while Touch her face (my fingers wet) Look in her eyes Until I see myself again A girl within her mother’s sight. If words have meaning, Mama, What is Is-ra-el? What does a word mean if it is mixed with another— If all soldiers, tanks, planes and guns are Is-ra-el-i What are they doing here In a place I know In a word I know—(Palestine) In a life that I no longer know? Hanan Ashrawi Jerusalem |
Enemies of the Sun
Enemies of the Sun |
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 Samih Al-Qassem I may lose my livelihood, I may stay without any food, I may be forced to sell my clothes, I may take menial jobs on the roads, As a servant, a porter, or a mason; Yet I shall never succumb, o, enemies of the sun! I shall fight, I shall persist To the last throb in my veins, I shall resist. You may usurp the last bit of my soil, You may send me to prison, to a life of toil, You may grab my grandfather’s heritage You may burn my poems, ban my books, Or offer my flesh to your dogs; Yet, enemies of the sun, I shall resist, I shall’ resist! |
Diaries of a Palestinian Wound
Diaries of a Palestinian Wound |
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 Mahmoud Darwish We shall remain wakeful, we remember! Al-Carmel lives in us, like a wonder: On our eyelids lives And the waters of our river do pass Through the texture of our native soil; We write no poetry, but we do toil: Twenty years before the June disaster, We lived in fetters, dear beloved sister! Those sad shadows that are darkling Upon your eyes, to eliminate sparkling Happiness, are but our long, dark night Against which we continued to fight. When you sang, dear skylark, |
Deep - Rooted We Stay
Deep - Rooted We Stay |
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 Tawfiq Zaiyyad On an olive tree I shall engrave The tragic secrets of my grave, And everything bitter I've tasted, And all the things plundered, wasted: The trees uprooted, the small village Surrendered to fire and pillage, The story of every crushed wild flower, Every demolished house, grove and bower. No war can ever kill the spirit of the free! This the savage invaders fail to see: A thousand intruders come and go, And melt like flakes of snow, While in our immortal country we stay Deep-rooted, dead or alive; we have our way. |
Composing poetry and verse
Composing poetry and verse |
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 Mahmoud Darwish In the coffins of my beloved ones, I sing For my little ones’ swings: My father’s blood is mine, so wait. Day is the end of the night. My father’s friend, his scythe, lies there, For me to water with stars’ rays. To ready it for the harvest to reap Every evil in a heap. My job, Sir? Composing poetry and verse. My pay? None but your grace. You don’t read? Pardon me sir, for newspapers Songs, and anthems are your echo proper. So that the sun shine longer, Sink deep in the earth, my friend, and tender, Like trees, deep roots, and then give to the clouds A trunk, a branch, and fruit. |
Children Bearing Stones
Children Bearing Stones |
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 Nizar Qabbani With stones in their hands, they defy the world and come to us like good tidings. They burst with anger and love, and they fall while we remain a herd of polar bears: a body armored against weather. Like mussels we sit in cafes, one hunts for a business venture one for another billion and a fourth wife and breasts polished by civilization. One stalks one traffics in arms one seeks revenge in nightclubs one plots for a throne, a private army, and princedom. Ah, generation of betrayal, of surrogate and indecent men, generations of leftovers, we'll be swept away-- never mind the slow pace of history-- by the children bearing rocks. |
Birds die in Galilee
Birds die in Galilee |
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 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 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. |
Psalm 6
Psalm 6 |
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 Mahmoud Darwish Translated by: Denys Johnson-Davies/The Music of Human Flesh. The trees of my country make a practice of greenness, While I practice memory. The lost voice in the wilderness Turns away towards the sky, and kneels: O clouds! Are you returning? I am not so sad, And yet those who do not know trees Do not love birds. And he knows no surprises Who makes a habit of lying. I am not so sad, And yet he knows not lying Who has not known fear. I am not so shrunk And yet it is the trees that are tall. Ladies and gentlemen, I love birds And know trees. I know surprises Because I have not known lying. I am bright as truth and the dagger And thus I ask you: Fire at the birds That I may describe the trees. Stop the That I may describe Stop That I may describe Stop Barada That I may describe And stop me from talking That I may describe myself. |
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