This is part of a large photo of Mahmoud Darwish near his grave site on a hill next to Ramallah’s Cultural Palace - where he had his final poetry reading in June.
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Truth has two faces. We’ve listened to the Greek mythology, and at times we’ve heard the Trojan victim speak through the mouth of the Greek Euripides. As for me, I’m looking for the poet of Troy, because Troy didn’t tell its story. And I wonder, does a land that has great poets have the right to control a people that has no poets? And is the lack of poetry amongst a people enough reason to justify its defeat? Is poetry a sign, or is it an instrument of power? Can a people be strong without having its own poetry?
I was a child of a people that had not been recognized until then. And I wanted to speak in the name of the absentee, in the name of the Trojan poet. There’s more inspiration and humanity in defeat than there is in victory. If I belonged to the victor’s camp, I’d demonstrate my support for the victims.
Do you know why we Palestinians are famous? Because you are our enemy. The interest in us stems from the interest in the Jewish issue. The interest is in you, not in me. So we have the misfortune of having Israel as an enemy, because it enjoys unlimited support. And we have the good fortune of having Israel as our enemy, because the Jews are the center of attention. You’ve brought us defeat and renown.
–Excerpt of Darwish’s conversation with an Israeli journalist from the 2004 film, Notre Musique, by French director Jean-Luc Godard.
To Life I say: Go slow, wait for me until the drunkenness dries in my glass
I have no role in what I was or who I will be
It is chance and chance has no name
I call the doctor 10 minutes before the death, 10 minutes are sufficient to live by chance.
Time has passed us,
Our fate is an exception to the rule
Here lie a murderer and the murdered, sleeping in one hole
And it remains for another poet to take this scenario to its end!
–Excerpts from Darwish’s last work, The Dice Thrower
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….
–Mahmoud Darwish, I Come From There
Between the luminescence of words and the darkness of times …lived Mahmud Darwish.
–Adonis
Mahmoud Darwish left no children to whom we can address our condolences. Instead, it is the Palestinian people as a whole who must receive our commiseration for the loss of their most vibrant voice at a time when so much else is being lost to them.
–Raymond Deane
