A River Dies of Thirst

by Mahmoud Darwish

  to the road to where. High ground

  and low ground. And the remains of the dead who saw their death

  standing in the road, and greeted it

  Death said: ‘Where are you going?’ They said: ‘To where!’

  We walk along as if we are alike. As if there/here

  are the same. As if the road is the goal

  without end, but where are we going, and where

  are we from? We are the inhabitants of this

  long road to a goal that bears a single name:

  Where.

  The humour of eternity

  Graveyards have the dignity of air, the authority of dust. You say farewell to your friend, Mamduh, and await your turn. The smell of wilting flowers and the rustling of trees transport you far away, to the place that lies beyond matter, to your final address in some part of nothingness. But you are thinking about something simpler: graves are mattresses. They seem like comfortable places to sleep. An occupant of such a grave would not lie staring up at his earthy sky and, like his counterpart in the graveyard near the Place du Trocadéro in Paris, would be part of everyday life, being so close to cafés, museums and the social interplay of the living. Life is within reach of his marble headstone, and the abundance of flowers, trees, birds and people surrounding him makes it unnecessary for him to go out for walks, after he has spent his life savings on procuring the privacy of this permanent address. There are some graves that make nothingness visible, like those out in the desert, far from trees and water. There is no companionship for the sleeper there, who burns in the summer heat and freezes in the winter cold, as if he continues to die forever, where death has no metaphor in sleep. But those who oversee the construction of their graves, furnishing them with their photographs, do not think about the comfort to be had from sleeping in friendly proximity to the living, but only of training history to read. They think also of something more complex, of bribing eternity, failing to understand that eternity does not visit graves and loves to joke.

  The indifferent one

  He cares about nothing. If they cut off the water

  to his house he says: ‘Never mind! Winter

  is close.’ And if they stop the electricity for an hour

  he yawns: ‘Never mind, the sun is enough’

  If they threaten to lower his pay he says

  ‘Never mind! I’ll give up alcohol

  and tobacco for a month.’ And if they take him to prison

  he says: ‘Never mind, I’ll be alone with myself for a while

  in the company of memories’

  And if they return him to his house he says:

  ‘Never mind! This is my home’

  I said to him once, angrily: ‘How will you live tomorrow?’

  He said: ‘Tomorrow does not concern me. It’s an idea

  that does not seduce me. I am what I am: nothing

  will change me, just as I will change

  nothing, so don’t keep the sun off me!’

  I said to him: ‘I am not Alexander the Great

  and I am not Diogenes’

  And he said: ‘But indifference is a philosophy

  It’s one aspect of hope.’

  The picture and the frame

  If a picture frame gets broken, as the result of a minor earth tremor, you take the picture to a good picture framer and he makes it a frame that may be better than the original. But if a picture is ugly, as the result of some basic artistic flaw, and its frame remains intact, you will not need it unless you are short of wood for the stove. It is the same thing with an idea: if its frame is broken, you find a stronger, more solid one for it. But if the idea is broken, its sound frame will be no more than a sad memory you preserve like a frustrated shepherd who keeps the bell from one of his rams after it has been killed by wolves.

  Snow

  The white air thickens, slows down and spreads like combed cotton in space. When it comes into contact with the body of night it lights it up on all sides. Snow. The electricity is cut off and I rely on the light from the snow to find my way to the path, the musical interlude between two walls, and to the room next to the six palm trees that stand like nuns on the valley shoulder. An almost metaphysical joy enters me from everything external, and I thank the wind that has brought the snow from regions accessible only in spirit. If I were different I would try hard to describe the snow. But as I have been snatched away into these white cosmic pastures, I break free from myself and am neither me nor someone else, for both of us are guests on the carpet of glittering white jewels, which are visible and wide open to interpretation. When the electricity is restored, I switch off the light and remain standing at the window and see myself over there – an apparition beyond the snow.

  An infectious disease

  He said to me, after he had broken the glass:

  ‘Don’t say that poetry, my friend, is beautiful

  or powerful

  for there is no powerful or beautiful poetry

  There is poetry that strikes you, secretly

  with the diseases of writing and schizophrenia, and you rave

  and your self leaves you for another, and you say:

  “I am this one or that one and I am not me.” You spend time

  examining words. And when you find

  a pulse for them, they stretch up and whisper in your ear:

  “Come close and go away, be a stranger and be one with us.” Milk

  flows from the night. You feel you are a child

  who will soon be born.’

  A bed of lavender

  Modest and reserved, sweetly perfumed, like a bed of lavender, you sit confronting my gaze. My fingers knock together, and my cup of coffee falls – my excuse, my trick to make you bring your perfume closer to me so that I can gather it up along with the slivers of cardamom – but it doesn’t reach me. Because the scent of lavender does not leave the safety of its bedchamber for someone waiting to enjoy its hidden bounty. With growing impatience I lean forward to catch a hint of fragrance from you, as you chastely try to preserve its virginity, swathed in its thick leaves. I move nearer to you, risking all, casting my fear aside. I stretch out my hands to the bed of lavender, rubbing it, holding it close, smelling it, squeezing it, and you say nothing. As if you really are lavender, whose perfume can be held in the hand.

  Most and least

  Even if you were not the dazzling presence you are, I would be the absence in you that I am – inside and out. Your presence is translucent, crystalline, I see gardens beyond it and am swept away to high wildernesses, inaccessible even to an imagination that is delighted by the range of metaphor and hindered by the poverty of everyday language. I say what I say to you in language that needs the density of honey and the lightness of a butterfly, in the presence of this power that is capable of raising mere chance to the level of something unique and wonderful. For where does your silence take us, as it bestows upon obscure language the seductiveness of word-play? As if I have not written before, and learnt by heart what I wrote to you. Your presence is translucent, and I do not know if your soul inhabited your body, or your body was clothed in your soul and shone like a pearl in my darkness. Form and substance are confused in my mind, and I see form as substance, and substance as the perfect form. I compete with you to be silent, so that I don’t say something which plunges me back into the sort of clumsy improvisation I used before you. No, I’m not a poet waiting to get his poem from the signals you give out. You and I – if we may be united in a single phrase, just as we are together here in one room – are light and airy guests on archetypal clouds, longing to fly to the trees of night, with no thought of a tomorrow that fails to prepare us to live without hope. So I am present and you are absent. I watch as your absence accumulates over my head like a heavy sky. Even if you were not the absence you are, I would be the presence I am. As if you are with me. As if I am in the utmost need of the least thing.

  I am jealous of everything around you

  I am j
ealous of my senses. The air is the colour of gardenias, your smell on my shoulders like laughter and triumphal arches. I am jealous of the peaceful daggers lying sheathed before you on the table, waiting for a sign from you to kill me. I am jealous of the vase, which has no need of its yellow roses because you give it the full benefit of your deep red lips, hungry for my hunger. I am jealous of the painting staring greedily at you: look longer at me, so I too can have my fill of lakes and cherry orchards. I am envious of the foliage on the rug, straining upwards to see an anklet descending on it from above, and of the anklet when it rests on your knee, making the marble in the room as hot as my fantasies. I am envious of the bookshop that is out of sorts because it doesn’t carry an erotic book in praise of two small ivory hills, bared before it to a frenzy of guitars, then hidden by a wave of sighing silk. I am envious of my fingers catching the dialogue of darkness and light as it overflows from your hands, the movement of a spoon in your teacup, the salts stirred up in a body that yearns for a storm to spark the fire of song: gather me up, all of you, and hold me close so I can envy my memories of you in the future. I envy my tongue, which calls your name with as much care as someone carrying four crystal glasses in one hand. I taste the letters of your name one by one, like lyrical fruits. I do not add water to them, so as to preserve the taste of peaches and the thirst of my senses. I envy my imagination embracing you, silencing you, kissing you, caressing you, holding you tight and letting you go, bringing you near and pushing you away, lifting you up and putting you down, making you submit and submitting to you, and doing all the things I never do.

  Lose one of your stars

  Is all this you?

  Mysterious and lucid

  present and absent at once

  Your eyes are a pitch black night that lights my way

  Your hands are cold and trembling

  but they ignite a fire in my body

  Your voice is a liquid melody that dissolves me in a glass

  You are solid and transparent, rebellious and tame

  a virgin, mother of two girls:

  my poem

  and a poem whose writer was destroyed by lack of imagination!

  Is all this you?

  Summer in winter, and in autumn the spring of yourself

  You grow old and young to the notes of your magic flute

  The air grows fresh with new life where you pass

  The distant water laughs when you look at the clouds

  and the sad stones rejoice when you go by in high heels

  Is this, all this, you?

  Lose one or two of your stars so I can believe

  you are a woman of flesh and blood

  and not music crushing me like a hazelnut underfoot

  Be a little diminished, and break free from your metaphor

  so that I can hold every part of you

  except the part I have released into the air.

  Private meetings

  I locked the door and put the key in my pocket. I closed the windows and drew the curtains. I wiped the dust off the mirror, the table and my spectacles, picked the faded flowers off the plant, selected Chopin’s Nocturnes and unplugged the phone so I wouldn’t be disturbed by my girlfriend asking what I was doing tonight. How could I tell her I had a private meeting with myself? I had the feeling that the night, like the world, was no longer a safe place to be as I waited calmly for my appointment. I poured red wine into two glasses and thought vaguely about what to say to my visitor – myself. I anticipated his particular way of exposing me and pulling off my masks, and his sarcastic question: ‘How long is it since we’ve met?’ I would say: ‘Not since you had your fill of me and I of you, and you took refuge in my image of you and I in yours of me.’ Then he would ask me: ‘So why didn’t you forget to forget me?’ I would say: ‘So I don’t miss an opportunity to ignore you.’ He would say to me: ‘I don’t understand you.’ I would say: ‘Nor do I. The world is no longer a safe place. I need you to save me. Why were you late for our meeting?’ He would ask: ‘What meeting?’ I would say: ‘This one. Have you forgotten?’ But there is no answer and I stare at his glass and it’s not there. I drank my wine and felt drunk and said: ‘I’m all alone.’ I plugged in the phone again and called my girlfriend. ‘Come and see me,’ I pleaded. She said: ‘I can’t leave the house, I’ve got a private meeting with myself.’

  She said to him

  ‘Night is a history of longing, and you are my night’

  you said to me, and left me

  You left my night to me, and yours, and both so cold

  and I will be hurt by winter and memories of you

  and you will be hurt by the scent of my lilies in the air

  Too bad!

  I will love the first passer-by

  crying over a woman who threw him out as you did me

  We (the stranger and I) will care for our night and light it up

  We will furnish our little eternity. We will choose

  (the stranger and I) our bed and our feelings with care

  Perhaps we will recite together (the stranger and I)

  the love poem you dedicated to me

  ‘Night is a history of longing

  and you are my night.’

  A sneeze

  Frustration follows the spurious kind of happiness that is like a sneeze brought on by the smell of petrol. I was happy I sneezed, but that doesn’t help create a memory I can look back on. When I ask: What is happiness? I am philosophizing without a philosophy, not trying to be a mystic searching for happiness in the beyond. I might find it by chance, and I might not, but I am not searching for happiness as much as for an answer to comfort and console me. Whenever I ask myself: Am I happy tonight? I am embarrassed by my naivety and open the window to see what the sky looks like, because the cold also makes me sneeze, and because the stars are words on their way towards me, and so a moment of happiness arrives from outside. Joy is nothing more than a winning lottery ticket, for which we only have to say thank you to chance. Is my life merely non-existence indulging me for a moment? As I write this question the electricity is cut off and I feel cold without sneezing!

  In praise of wine

  I study the wine in the glass before tasting it. I let it breathe the air it has been deprived of for years. It has been suffocated to preserve its character. It has fermented while it slumbered, and stored summer for me, and the memory of grapes. I leave it to choose its colour, wrongly described as red. It is a mixture of crimson tinged faintly with black, which can only be called wine-coloured, so we can take a break from the charade of describing things. I let it respect its smell, the proud, exalted smell like women of unblemished reputation. If you want to smell it, it doesn’t come to you. You have to make sure your hand is clean and free of perfume, then extend it softly and affectionately towards the glass as if approaching a woman’s breast. You bring the glass up to your nose with the deliberate action of a bee, and a profound, mysterious smell throws you into disarray: the smell of a colour that takes you into old monasteries. I let it gather its thoughts on its taste until we are both thirsty enough to receive inspiration by mouth. I go neither too fast nor too slowly, for either would break the rhythm of enjoyment. I bring the glass to my lips as shyly as a man begging a first kiss from a woman whose feelings are not clear to him. I take a delicate sip and look upwards, eyes half closed, until the most exquisite feeling of intoxication flows through my veins. My appetite is aroused as befits a wine fit for a king. The wine is raising me to a higher level, not celestial but not earthly either, and convincing me that I have it in me to be a poet, even if it’s just this once!

  At the top of the cypress trees

  She said to him: ‘Are you the one who wrote the poem?’

  He said: ‘I don’t know. I dreamt I was alive’

  She said: ‘Then what?’

  He said: ‘I believed the dream, and flew for joy

  to you, to you’

  She said: ‘Then what?’

  H
e said: ‘When I spoke your name the valley returned

  the echo, and my eyes were bathed in visions’

  She said: ‘Then what?’

  He said: ‘I dreamt nothing more

  I see in the glass clearly. You are you

  as I saw you in my dream. And I am I’

  She said: ‘And what else?’

  He said to her: ‘Life is short and beautiful

  Are you the one who wrote my last poem for me?’

  She said: ‘No. I am a ghost’

  He said: ‘So am I, perhaps ghosts can converse

  like souls’

  She said: ‘Where are we now?’

  He said: ‘At the top of the cypress trees.’

  Point of view

  What distinguishes the narcissus and the sunflower is their different points of view: the former looks at its reflection in the water and says: ‘There is no I but I’, while the latter looks at the sun and says: ‘I am only what I worship.’

  At night the distinction grows narrower, and the interpretation broader!

  The mercy bullet

  I envy horses: if they break a leg and feel humiliated because they can no longer charge back and forth in the wind, they are cured by a mercy bullet. So if something in me gets broken, physically or spiritually, I would do well to look for a proficient killer, even if he is one of my enemies. I will pay him a fee and the price of the bullet, kiss his hand and his revolver, and if I am able to write, extol him in a poem of rare beauty, for which he can choose the metre and rhyme.