Mahmoud Darwish (1941-2008)

From With the Mist So Dense on the Bridge

I gaze at a rose in the distance
and the charcoal catches fire.
I gaze at my birthplace, farther out,
and the grave expands.”

I said, “Gently, do not die now.
Life is possible on the bridge.
The metaphor is wide enough:
it is an isthmus between this world and the next,
between exile and a neighboring land.”

He said to me, while the hawks hovered above us,
“Take my name as companion,
tell it about me, and you live
until the bridge brings you back to life tomorrow.
Do not say, ‘He lived or died aimlessly marginalized.’
Say, ‘He looked down on himself from above
and saw himself clothed in a tree.’”
And he was happy with that greeting.

If this road is long
there is work for me in mythology;

I was alone on the bridge on that day
after the Messiah withdrew to
a hill in the suburbs of Jericho, before the Resurrection.
I walk, and I cannot go in or out.
I turn like a sunflower.

At night, I am awakened
by the voice of the soldier on night watch
as she sings to her lover:

Promise me nothing,
do not send me a rose from Jericho!