Mahmoud Darwish Poems

It is night and she is lonely
and I am lonely like her,
...

And we, too, have the right to love the last days of autumn and ask:
Is there room in the field for a new autumn, so we may lie down like coals?
...

and the Galilean women were wet
with butterflies and dew,
dancing above chrysanthemum

The two absent ones: you and I
...

To our land,
and it is the one near the word of god,
a ceiling of clouds
To our land,
...

For two hands, of stone and of thyme
I dedicate this song.. For Ahmad, forgotten between two butterflies
The clouds are gone and have left me homeless, and
The mountains have flung their mantles and concealed me
...

Tighten my fetters.
Confiscate my papers
...

We do not need to be reminded:
Mount Carmel is in us
and on our eyelashes the grass of Galilee.
Do not say: If we could run to her like a river.
...

Earth is pressing against us, trapping us in the final passage.
To pass through, we pull off our limbs.
...

O those who pass between fleeting words
carry your names, and be gone
Rid our time of your hours, and be gone
Steal what you will from the blueness of the sea
And the sand of memory
Take what pictures you will, so that you understand
That which you never will:
...

In Her Absence I Created Her Image
In her absence I created her image: out of the earthly
the hidden heavenly commences. I am here weighing
the expanse with the Jahili odes ... and absence
is the guide, it is the guide. For each rhyme a tent
is pitched. And for each thing blowing in the wind
a rhyme. Absence teaches me its lesson: If it weren't
for the mirage you wouldn't have been steadfast ...
...