Mahmoud Darwish, Poet
Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish, who voiced the hearts and minds of the Palestinian nation through poetry, passed away August 9, 2008 at the age of 67. Darwish had undergone open heart surgery at a Houston hospital on Wednesday. His prose described the Palestinian struggle for independence and was revered for its articulate way of putting the pain, frustration and desires of the Palestinian people into words.
Darwish published his first collection of poems, Bird Without Wings in the 1960s and went on to write 21 additional collections up to 2008, when his last book, The Impression of Butterflies was published.
“He translated the pain of the Palestinians in a magical way,” said the Egyptian poet Ahmed Fouad Negm to the Associated Press. “He made us cry and made us happy and shook our emotions.”
Darwish’s books were translated into over 20 languages.
Darwish not only penned poetry but also helped write several speeches for Palestinian leaders, including the late Yasser Arafat.
Darwis was born in the Palestinian village of Birweh near Haifa. That village was destroyed in the 1948 Middle East war that led to Israel’s independence. After high school he began writing poems for leftist newspapers. Darwish lived in the former Soviet Union, Egypt and Lebanon throughout the 1970s and 80s before moving back to Ramallah on the West Bank.
Read Mahmoud Darwish’s complete obituary.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/08/10/news/obits.php
Below, Mahmoud Darwish’s I Am There
I come from there and remember,
I was born like everyone is born, I have a mother
and a house with many windows,
I have brothers, friends and a prison.
I have a wave that sea-gulls snatched away.
I have a view of my own and an extra blade of grass.
I have a moon past the peak of words.
I have the godsent food of birds and an olive tree beyond the kent of time.
I have traversed the land before swords turned bodies into banquets.
I come from there, I return the sky to its mother when for its mother the sky cries, and I weep for a returning cloud to know me.
I have learned the words of blood-stained courts in order to break the rules.
I have learned and dismantled all the words to construct a single one:
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