A River Dies of Thirst

by Mahmoud Darwish

  Assassination

  The critics kill me sometimes:

  they want a particular poem

  a particular metaphor

  and if I stray up a side road

  they say: ‘He has betrayed the road’

  And if I find eloquence in grass

  they say: ‘He has abandoned the steadfastness of the holm oak’

  And if I see the rose in spring as yellow

  they ask: ‘Where is the blood of the homeland in its petals?’

  And if I write: ‘It is the butterfly my youngest sister

  at the garden door’

  they stir the meaning with a soup spoon

  And if I whisper: ‘A mother is a mother, when she loses her child

  she withers and dries up like a stick’

  they say: ‘She trills with joy and dances at his funeral

  for his funeral is his wedding’

  And if I look up at the sky to see

  the unseen

  they say: ‘Poetry has strayed far from its objectives’

  The critics kill me sometimes

  and I escape from their reading

  and thank them for their misunderstanding

  then search for my new poem.

  Rustling

  Like one responding to a hidden inspiration, I listen attentively to the sound of the leaves in the summer trees . . . a shy, soothing sound descending from the far reaches of sleep . . . a faint sound smelling of wheat from an isolated spot in the countryside . . . a fragmented sound divided into improvised sections on the strings of a leisurely breeze, no part too diffuse or longwinded. Leaves in summer whisper modestly, call out shyly, as if to me alone, stealing me away from the burden of material existence to a place of delicate radiance: there, behind the hills, and beyond the imagination, where the visible equals the invisible, I float outside myself in sunless light. After a short sleep like an awakening, or an awakening like a short sleep, the rustling of the trees restores me to myself, cleansed of misgivings and apprehensions. I do not ask the meaning of this sound: if it is a leaf whispering confidences to its sister in the emptiness, or the breeze longing for a siesta. A voice without words rocks me, kneads me and forms me into a vessel which exudes a substance neither from it nor in it, like a feeling searching for someone to feel it.

  A metaphor

  On this blue day, you stand for a long time on a high mountain and stare at clouds merging together, covering land and sea. You think you are higher than yourself, like a bird existing only in a metaphor. The metaphor entices you to break away from it and look at the empty sky, like a blue desert without a mirage to be seen. Then the metaphor calls you back to its source and you cannot find a way through the clouds.

  On this blue night, you see the mountains looking at the stars and the stars looking at the mountains. You think they can see you, so you thank them for their affable company. You are reluctant to emerge from the metaphor in case you fall into the well of loneliness.

  In the company of things

  We were guests of things, most of them

  care less than us when we leave them

  A traveller weeps, and the river laughs at her:

  pass by, for a river is much the same at the beginning as at the end

  Nothing waits. Things are indifferent

  to us, and we greet them and are grateful to them

  But since we call them our feelings

  we believe in the name. Is their essence in the name?

  We are the guests of things, most of us

  forget our initial feelings, and deny them.

  A shawl made of silk

  A shawl on a tree branch. A girl has passed by here, or the wind, and hung her shawl on the tree. This is not a piece of information, but the opening of a poem by a poet who is at ease, and who no longer suffers from love, so he has begun to view it – from a distance – like a beautiful pastoral scene. He has put himself in the scene: the willow tree is tall, the shawl made of silk. This indicates that the girl used to meet her boy in summer and they would sit on the dry grass. It also means that they used to lure birds to a secret wedding, for the broad horizon in front of them on this hill is attractive to birds. Perhaps he said to her: ‘I long for you when you are with me, as if you were far away.’ And perhaps she said to him: ‘I embrace you when you are far away, as if you were my breasts.’ Perhaps he said to her: ‘I melt at your glances and become music.’ And perhaps she said to him: ‘Your hand on my knee makes time sweat, so rub me so that I melt away.’ The poet becomes increasingly involved in describing the silk shawl, not noticing that it is a cloud that happens to be passing between the branches of the tree at sunset.

  A sort of loss

  I climb up from this valley, making my own way, unaided. I climb a steep hill to see the sea. I am not borne along by a song, or a misunderstanding with the essence of things. I amuse myself by dodging my shadow and thinking cheerfully about where a rainbow ends, and this distracts me suddenly from my shadow, which has become entangled in a thorn bush and is injured but not bleeding. I bend down to help free it and get pricked by a thorn. I imagine, to begin with, that the drop of blood on my hand is a reflection of one of the colours of the rainbow. But a slight pain in my hand makes me aware that what the sunlight does with a body of airborne moisture is something else. I bind my trifling injury with a paper handkerchief and continue climbing the steep hill to see the sea. But the clouds grow thicker and cover the low ground and the outlying areas and the sea, which has been taken prisoner in one of the wars. Night falls, and the lights of the settlements appear on all sides. When I descend the steep hill into the valley, making my own way, unaided, I remember I have left my shadow hanging on a thorn bush. I don’t know if I am sad or not, as a literary loss such as this is not worth recording. I say: ‘Tomorrow I will climb a higher hill to see the sea beyond the settlements. But I will strap my shadow to me so I don’t lose it again.’

  A shameful land

  This is a confined land that we inhabit and that inhabits us. A confined land, not big enough for a short meeting between a prophet and a general. If two cocks fight over a hen and their pride, their feathers fly off the walls. A confined land with no intimacy for a male and female dove to mate. A shameful land. A land yellow in summer, where the thorns carve notches in the surface of the rocks to pass the time, even if our poetry says the opposite, and supplies it with anthologies of descriptions of paradise to satisfy the hunger for beautiful things felt by those seeking to preserve their identity. We, narrators of the documents, official and poetic, required to be produced spontaneously, know that the sky will never abandon its many works to give evidence. A confined land, and we love it and believe it loves us, living or dead. We love it and know it is not big enough for brazen laughter, or a nun’s prayer, or to hang washing out of reach of the neighbours’ prying eyes, not big enough for the fourteenth line of a translated sonnet. A confined land with no area big enough for a proper battle with an external enemy, and no hall large enough for people to meet in to construct an extensive preamble to a spurious peace. In spite of this, or because of it, people say that a discontented god chose it as a cave to retreat to, a place to hide from the uninvited guests, who immediately stole our rams’ horns and used them as weapons to keep us away from the door of the holy cave.

  Summer and winter

  There is nothing new. The seasons here are two:

  a summer as long as a far away minaret

  and a winter like a nun humbly praying

  As for spring

  it cannot stop

  except to say: ‘Greetings to you

  on Ascension Day’

  While autumn

  is merely a place of seclusion

  in which to contemplate how much of our life we have lost

  on the return journey

  ‘Where did we leave our life behind?’ I asked the butterfly

  circling around in the light

  and it burnt up in i
ts tears.

  A coloured cloud

  As I wash the dishes I am filled with an invigorating emptiness and amuse myself with the soap bubbles. The water comes out of the tap with a rhythm that demands music. I accompany it with bursts of whistling and a phrase from a nondescript popular song. I play with the lather, which is like a cloud in which seasonal colours gleam then fade. I grasp the cloud in my hand and distribute it over the plates, glasses, cups, spoons and knives. It inflates as drops of water run over it. I scoop it up and make it fly through the air and it laughs at me, and my sense of having time to spare increases. My mind is blank, as indifferent as the noonday heat. But images of memories descend from afar and land in the bowl of water, neutral memories, neither painful nor joyful, such as a walk in a pine forest, or waiting for a bus in the rain, and I wash them as intently as if I had a literary crystal vase in my hands. When I am sure they’re not broken, they return safely to where they came from in the pine forest, and I remain here. I play with the soapy lather and forget what is absent. I look contentedly at my mind, as clear as the kitchen glass, and at my heart, as free of stains as a carefully washed plate. When I feel completely sated with invigorating emptiness, I fill it with words of interest to nobody but me: these words!

  A spring passing quickly

  ‘The spring has passed quickly

  like a thought

  that has flown from the mind’

  said the anxious poet

  In the beginning, its rhythm pleased him

  so he went on line by line

  hoping the form would burst forth

  He said: ‘A different rhyme

  would help me to sing

  so my heart would be untroubled and the horizon clear’

  The spring has passed us by

  It waited for no one

  The shepherd’s crook did not wait for us

  nor did the basil

  He sang, and found no meaning

  and was enraptured

  by the rhythm of a song that had lost its way

  He said: ‘Perhaps meaning is born

  by chance

  and perhaps my spring is this unease.’

  Life to the last drop

  If someone said to me again: ‘Supposing you were to die tomorrow, what would you do?’ I wouldn’t need any time to reply. If I felt drowsy, I would sleep. If I was thirsty, I would drink. If I was writing, I might like what I was writing and ignore the question. If I was having lunch, I would add a little mustard and pepper to the slice of grilled meat. If I was shaving, I might cut my earlobe. If I was kissing my girlfriend, I would devour her lips as if they were figs. If I was reading, I would skip a few pages. If I was peeling an onion, I would shed a few tears. If I was walking, I would continue walking at a slower pace. If I existed, as I do now, then I wouldn’t think about not existing. If I didn’t exist, then the question wouldn’t bother me. If I was listening to Mozart, I would already be close to the realms of the angels. If I was asleep, I would carry on sleeping and dream blissfully of gardenias. If I was laughing, I would cut my laughter by half out of respect for the information. What else could I do, even if I was braver than an idiot and stronger than Hercules?

  The butterfly effect

  The butterfly effect is invisible

  The butterfly effect is always there

  It is the attraction of mysterious things

  which entice meaning, and depart

  when the way becomes clear

  It is the lightness of the eternal in the everyday

  a longing for loftier things

  a beautiful brightness

  It is a beauty spot in the light signalling

  when we are guided towards words

  by an impulse within us

  It is like a song trying

  to say something, and being content

  to borrow from the shadows

  and say nothing

  The butterfly effect is invisible

  The butterfly effect is always there.

  I was not with me

  Staring at the ceiling, resting my face on my hand, like somebody stealing up on a fresh idea, or lying in wait for a gleam of inspiration. After a few hours I realise I wasn’t there on the ceiling, or here on the chair, and my mind was blank. I was absorbed in nothing, in total, complete emptiness, separated from my being, sheltered by a benign absence, and free from pain. I was neither sad nor happy, for nothingness has no connection to emotion or to time. Not a single memory shook me awake from this trance, and no fear of my fate disturbed my obliviousness to the future. For some reason, I was sure I would live until tomorrow. I could not hear the sound of the rain shattering the smell of the breeze outside, or the flutes bearing the inside away. I was nothing in the presence of nothing, and I was calm, trusting, confident. For how lovely it is for a person to be nothing, only once, no more!

  The faces of truth

  Truth is a metaphorical female

  when fire and water mix

  in its form

  Truth is relativity

  when blood mixes with blood

  in its night

  Truth is plain as day

  when the victim walks

  with amputated legs

  slowly

  And truth is a character

  in the poem

  It is not what it is

  or its opposite

  It is what falls in drops from its shadow.

  As if he were asleep

  He woke up all at once. He opened the window onto a faint light, a clear sky and a refreshing breeze. He felt his body, limb by limb, and found it was intact. He looked at the pillow and saw that no hairs had fallen out in the night. He looked at the sheet and saw no blood. He switched on the radio and there were no reports of new killings in Iraq or Gaza or Afghanistan. He thought he was asleep. He rubbed his eyes in the mirror and recognised his face easily. He shouted: ‘I’m alive.’ He went into the kitchen to prepare coffee. He put a spoonful of honey in a glass of fat-free milk. On the balcony he saw a visiting canary perched on a tub of flowers he’d forgotten to water. He said good morning to the canary and scattered some breadcrumbs for it. The canary flew away and alighted on the branch of a bush and began to sing. Again, he thought he must be asleep. He looked in the mirror once more and said: ‘That’s me.’ He listened to the latest news report. No new killings anywhere. He was delighted by this peculiar morning. His delight led him to the writing desk, with one line in his head: ‘I’m alive even though I feel no pain.’ He was filled with a passionate desire to make poetry, because of a crystal clarity that had descended upon him from some distant place: from the place where he was now! When he sat at the writing desk he found the line ‘I’m alive even though I feel no pain,’ written on a blank sheet of paper. This time he didn’t just think he was asleep. He was sure of it.

  Visible music

  When I listen to music gardens open out around me, and the melody becomes a flower I hear with my eyes. Sound has an image, and this image has a sound, which slowly gathers momentum like waves, more far-reaching than a literary metaphor. Carnations leave their flower beds and are distributed on the tables of high-class restaurants to compensate a stranger for some forgotten loss, or make a diner waiting for his companion better prepared to face the uncertainties of their encounter. Nobody stops the narcissus listening for hours to a song of joy in the water and believing it is a song of praise. When white lilies fill a room with their huge, pungent scent, I am confused by my thoughts about them, the opposite of violets, which make me pause where two sounds intersect and dissolve, indistinguishable as the tears shed at weddings and funerals, and the opposite of anemones, which are content with a song on the broad margins, a pastorale on the low mountain slopes. All of this is so I can say: the red rose is visible music, and jasmine is a message of longing from nobody to nobody.

  The road to where

  for Sargon Boulos

  It is a long road to where. High ground


  and low ground. Day and night on either side

  A short winter and a long summer. Palm trees

  and cypresses, and sunflowers on either side

  Gas stations, cafés and clinics

  and traffic police on either side. And a prison

  a small one, and a shop for tobacco and tea, and a school

  for boys, and cellars for girls, and a sign

  displaying the temperature, and a billboard for foreigners: Welcome