In Jerusalem a poem by Mahmoud Darwish ...& a poster celebrating Jerusalem as the capital of Arab culture of 2009

A Jordanian student stands near her poster of the late Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish during the opening of the Jerusalem in the Fine Arts conference in Amman December 12, 2009, as part of celebrations to mark the Arab League's designation of Jerusalem as the capital of Arab culture of 2009. REUTERS/Muhammad Hamed (JORDAN - Tags: SOCIETY)

POETS.ORG
http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/19183

In Jerusalem
by Mahmoud Darwish Translated by Fady Joudah
In Jerusalem, and I mean within the ancient walls, I walk from one epoch to another without a memory to guide me. The prophets over there are sharing the history of the holy . . . ascending to heaven and returning less discouraged and melancholy, because love and peace are holy and are coming to town. I was walking down a slope and thinking to myself: How do the narrators disagree over what light said about a stone? Is it from a dimly lit stone that wars flare up? I walk in my sleep. I stare in my sleep. I see no one behind me. I see no one ahead of me. All this light is for me. I walk. I become lighter. I fly then I become another. Transfigured. Words sprout like grass from Isaiah’s messenger mouth: “If you don’t believe you won’t believe.” I walk as if I were another. And my wound a white biblical rose. And my hands like two doves on the cross hovering and carrying the earth. I don’t walk, I fly, I become another, transfigured. No place and no time. So who am I? I am no I in ascension’s presence. But I think to myself: Alone, the prophet Mohammad spoke classical Arabic. “And then what?” Then what? A woman soldier shouted: Is that you again? Didn’t I kill you? I said: You killed me . . . and I forgot, like you, to die.