Poems by Mahmoud Darwish

Mahmoud Darwish is a contemporary Palestinian poet, internationally recognized for his poetry, focused on the strong affection for a lost homeland. Poems by Mahmoud Darwish:

*He Is Calm, and I Am Too

He is calm,

And I am too.

He drinks lemon tea,

And I drink coffee.

(this is the only thing different about us)

He, like me, wears a loose striped shirt,

And I stare, like him, in a monthly magazine.

He does not see me as I eye him discreetly;

I do not see him as he eyes me discreetly.

He is calm,

And I am too.

He asks the waiter for something;

I ask the waiter for something.

A black cat passes between us,

And I touch its night of fur;

He touches its night of fur.

I do not tell him: The sky is clear today,

More blue;

He does not tell me: the sky is clear today.

He is the seen and the one who sees;

I am the seen and the one ho sees.

I move my left leg;

He moves his right leg.

I hum the melody of a song;

He hums the melody of a song.

I wonder: Is he the mirror wherein I see myself?

Then I look towards his eyes, and I do not see him.

I leave the coffee shop in a hurry,

I think: Maybe he is a killer,

Or maybe he is only a man passing through

And though I am a killer.

*Without exile, who am I?

Stranger on the bank, like the river . . . tied up to your name by water.

Nothing will bring me back from my free distance to my palm tree: not peace, nor war.

Nothing will inscribe me in the Book of Testaments.

Nothing, nothing glints off the shore of ebb and flow, between the Tigris and the Nile.

Nothing gets me off the chariots of Pharaoh.

Nothing carries me for a while, or makes me carry an idea: not promises, nor nostalgia.

What am I to do, then?

What am I to do without exile, without a long night staring at the water?

Tied up to your name by water . . .

Nothing takes me away from the butterfly of my dreams back into my present: not earth, nor fire.

What am I to do, then, without the roses of Samarkand?

What am I to do in a square that burnishes the chanters with moon-shaped stones?

Lighter we both have become, like our homes in the distant winds.

We have both become friends with the clouds' strange creatures; outside the reach of the gravity of the Land of Identity.

What are we to do, then . . .

What are we to do without exile, without a long night staring at the water?

Tied up to your name by water . . .

Nothing's left of me except for you; nothing's left of you except for me -- a stranger caressing his lover's thigh: O my stranger!

What are we to do with what's left for us of the stillness,

of the siesta that separates legend from legend?

Nothing will carry us: not the road, nor home.

Was this road the same from the start, or did our dreams find a mare among the horses of the Mongols on the hill, and trade us off?

And what are we to do, then? What are we to do without exile?

*Passport

They did not recognize me in the shadows

That suck away my color in this Passport

And to them my wound was an exhibit

For a tourist Who loves to collect photographs

They did not recognize me,

Ah . . . Don't leave

The palm of my hand without the sun

Because the trees recognize me

All the songs of the rain recognize me

Dont' leave me pale like the moon!

All the birds that followed my palm

To the door of the distant airport

All the wheatfields

All the prisons

All the white tombstones

All the barbed boundaries

All the waving handkerchiefs

All the eyes were with me,

But they dropped them from my passport

Stripped of my name and identity?

On a soil I nourished with my own hands?

Today Job cried out

Filling the sky: Don't make an example of me again!

Oh, gentlemen, Prophets,

Don't ask the trees for their names.

Don't ask the valleys who their mother is.

From my forehead bursts the sword of light,

And from my hand springs the water of the river

All the hearts of the people are my identity

So take away my passport!

*Psalm Three

On the day when my words were earth...

I was a friend to stalks of wheat.

On the day when my words were wrath

I was a friend to chains.

On the day when my words were stones

I was a friend to streams.

On the day when my words were a rebellion

I was a friend to earthquakes.

On the day when my words were bitter apples

I was a friend to the optimist.

But when my words became honey... flies covered my lips!...