Tawba Poem by Hussein Barghouthi

(And Tawba was a sunset of strange greenness,
and in him a distance like fire
and in him a blue path.
And Tawba was too far to have,
Like a cloth,
"two strangers. The mountains are, the mountains, the mountains"
And Tawba is this sunset that is
Behind the mountains in her mind.)
("I saw you in the mountains of thorn a shepherd
without goats…"
and in dreams
the ocean sea sounds by the entries of her heart
at night the emptiness of the sea makes her lonely
this wide and expanding emptiness
Tawba was a different sea, but…
of him was a wave in her sea.)