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I Belong There
Mahmoud Darwish
Translated by Munir Akash and Carolyn Forché



I belong there. I have many memories. I was born as everyone is born.
I have a mother, a house with many windows, brothers, friends, and a prison cell
with a chilly window! I have a wave snatched by seagulls, a panorama of my own.
I have a saturated meadow. In the deep horizon of my word, I have a moon,
a bird's sustenance, and an immortal olive tree.
I have lived on the land long before swords turned man into prey.
I belong there. When heaven mourns for her mother, I return heaven to
her mother.
And I cry so that a returning cloud might carry my tears.
To break the rules, I have learned all the words needed for a trial by blood.
I have learned and dismantled all the words in order to draw from them a
single word: Home.

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Mahmoud Darwish

Mahmoud Darwish was born in 1942 in Barwa, Palestine (now Israel), into a land-owning Sunni Muslim family. Following the Israeli occupation in 1948 his family fled their hometown.

His collections of poetry include Stage of Siege (2002), The Adam of Two Edens (2001), Mural (2000), Bed of the Stranger (1999), Psalms (1995), and The Music of Human Flesh (1980).

In 1996 Darwish returned to Israel after twenty-six years of exile to visit his birthplace, and settled in Ramallah in the West Bank. He is currently the editor-in-chief and founder of the literary review Al Karmel, published out of the Sakakini Centre since 1997.

[Miss. Ladybird]

I love his poems. One of my favorite is "MOHAMED". He wrote this poem for the martyr Mohamed Al-Dorra. The child that the Zionists killed in front of his own father and in front of the international cameras in 2000.
You will find it written in French, Arabic and in English in: http://www.arabworldbooks.com/Literature/poetry1.html

[Miss. Ladybird]

:Mahmoud Darwish was born in 1942 in Barwa, Palestine (now Israel)...

:R: :R: For him and for us it will always be Palestine. :R: :R:

A Lover From Palestine

Her eyes are Palestinian
Her name is Palestinian
Her dress and sorrow Palestinian
Her kerchief, her feet and body Palestinian
Her words and silence Palestinian
Her voice Palestinian
Her birth and her death Palestinian

Mahmoud Darwish

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:R:

thank you for the link and the poem Miss.Ladybird.