If I were another I would have belonged to the road,neither you nor I would return. Awaken the guitarand we might sense the unknown and the route that temptsthe traveler to test gravity. I am onlymy steps, and you are both my compass and my chasm.If I were another on the road, I would havehidden… Continue reading Mahmoud Darwish
Out of jasmine the night’s blood streams white. Your perfume,my weakness and your secret, follows me like a snakebite. — Mahmoud Darwish, from “Sonnet V,” The Butterfly’s Burden (Copper Canyon Press, August 1, 2006)
Last night I dreamed—blessed illusion—that I had a beehive herein my heartand that the golden bees were makingwhite combs and sweet honeyfrom my old failures. — Naomi Shihab Nye, Honeybee: Poems (HarperCollins, 2009)
I fear to go back to any night I have knownI fear the eyes that can break through my banksSo that my heart is exposed to allI am afraid to confessThat I am afraid to go back to any heart I have drunkAnd so throw myself into the well… in myself. I am the unlucky… Continue reading Mahmoud Darwish
and I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slowAnswer, if you hear the words under the words—otherwise it is just a world with a lot of rough edges, difficult to get through, and our pockets full of stones. — Naomi Shihab Nye, from “The Words Under the Words,” Words Under the Words:… Continue reading Naomi Shihab Nye
We are captives of what we love, what we desire, and what we are. — Mahmoud Darwish, “The Hoopoe,” Unfortunately, It Was Paradise: Selected Poems. (University of California Press, 2003)
and I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slowAnswer, if you hear the words under the words—otherwise it is just a world with a lot of rough edges, difficult to get through, and our pockets full of stones. — Naomi Shihab Nye, from “The Words Under the Words,” Words Under the Words:… Continue reading Naomi Shihab Nye
How much I love you! How much you are you! and intimidated byhis own soul:There is no I now, but she is now in me. No she, but I am in herfragility. How I fearFor my dream, lest it see a dream that is not she atThe end of this song… — Mahmoud Darwish, from… Continue reading Mahmoud Darwish
I would yearn for nothingno yesterday passing, no tomorrow to comeand my present neither advancing nor retreatingNothing happening to me!If only I were a stone – I said – Oh if only I weresome stone so that water would burnish megreen, yellow – I would be placed in a roomlike a sculpture, or exercises in… Continue reading Mahmoud Darwish
From my loneliness,a lantern takes shapeto be used in an emergencyduring rainstorms.Or donatedto miners working in a gold mine. From my loneliness,a carriage is madeto be used at tourist spots.Or when the express trainderails in bad weather. From my loneliness,a bridge will be builtto be used during and afterthe war for tanks to cross.Or to… Continue reading Zeeshan Sahil
The Vale of Soul-Making 