"I Am From There" a poem by Mahmoud Darwish of Palestine

A Palestinian girl takes a closer look at cherry blossom at a park in central Hebron, in the West Bank

Photograph: Abed Al Hashlamoun/EPA photo published in the Guardian 2009 "In Bloom"

I Am From There

Mahmoud Darwish - Palestine

I am from there and I have memories.

I was born, as all people are born.

I have a mother,

and a house with many windows.

I have brothers, friends,

and a prison with a cold window.

Mine is the wave, snatched by seagulls.

I have my own view,

and an extra blade of grass.

Mine is the moon at the ends of speech,

and the blessings of birds,

and an immortal olive tree.

I passed over this land before the swords

Turned its body into a table.

I am from here.

I return the sky to her mother,

when she weeps her mother.

I cry to make myself known,

to a returning cloud.

I learned all the words befitting of the court of blood,

so that I can I break the rule.

I learned all the words, and dismantled them,

To create a single word: homeland…

[Original Arabic]: 

أنا من هناك

محمود درويش – فلسطين

أنا من هناك. ولي ذكرياتٌ . ولدت كما تولد الناس. لي والدة

وبيتٌ كثير النوافذِ. لي إخوةٌ. أصدقاء. وسجنٌ بنافذة باردهْ.

ولي موجةٌ خطفتها النوارس. لي مشهدي الخاص. لي عشبةٌ زائدهْ

ولي قمرٌ في أقاصي الكلام، ورزقُ الطيور، وزيتونةٌ خالدهْ

مررتُ على الأرض قبل مرور السيوف على جسدٍ حوّلوه إلى مائدهْ.

أنا من هناك. أعيد السماء إلى أمها حين تبكي السماء على أمها،

وأبكي لتعرفني غيمةٌ عائدهْ.

تعلّمتُ كل كلام يليقُ بمحكمة الدم كي أكسر القاعدهْ

تعلّمتُ كل الكلام، وفككته كي أركب مفردةً واحدهْ

…هي: الوطن

Almond Blossoms and Beyond......

Songs and Pictures from Palestine

If you walk on the street that does not lead to an abyss,
say to the garbage collector, Thank you!
If you come back home alive, as rhyme returns,
unharmed, say to yourself, Thank you!
If you have expected something, and your guess has deceived you,

go tomorrow to see where you were, and say to the butterfly, Thank you!

Almond Blossoms and Beyond: Poems by Mahmoud Darwish

 

 

 

 

 

The first English translation of recent poetry by the late Mahmoud Darwish, the most important Palestinian contemporary poet. Almond Blossoms and Beyond is one of the last collections of poetry that Mahmoud Darwish left to the world. Composed of brief lyric poems and the magnificent sustained Exile cycle, Almond Blossoms holds an important place in Darwish's unparalleled oeuvre. It distills his late style, in which, though the specter of death looms and weddings turn to funerals, he threads the pulses and fragilities and beauties of life into the lines of his poems. Their liveliness is his own response to the collection's final call to bid "Farewell / Farewell, to the poetry of pain."