Taken from the last poem Darwish wrote before he died on August 9, 2008

 

 

The Dice Player

 

Who am I to say to you

What I say to you?

I’m not a stone

Polished by water

To become a face

Nor am I a stick of cane

With holes made by the wind

To become a flute….

I’m a dice player

I win sometimes

I lose sometimes

I’m like you

Or a little bit less than you

I was born beside the well

Beside the three lonely trees

As lonely as nuns

I was born with no celebration or midwife

I was given my name just by chance

I belonged to a family

By chance

I inherited their features,  habits,

And sickness.

 

I could have not existed

My father could have not married my mother

By chance

I could have been like my sister

Who screamed and died

Not knowing

That she had lived only one hour

Not knowing who gave her birth.

 

Who am I to say to you

What I say to you

At the door of the church?

I’m nothing but a dice throw

Between predator and prey

I gained more awareness

Not to be happy with my moonlit night

But to witness the massacre

I survived by chance:

I was smaller than a military target

And bigger than a bee

Flying among the flowers over the fence

I worried a lot about my brothers and my father

I worried about a time made of glass

I worried about my cat and my rabbit

About a charming moon over the high minaret of the mosque.

 

I could have not been a swallow

If the wind had wished it so

The wind is the traveller’s luck

I went north, east, west

But the south was too hard for me

Too far from me

Because the south is my country

I became a metaphor of a swallow

Floating over my debris

In the spring, in the autumn

Baptising my feathers with the clouds of the lake

Prolonging my greeting

Unto the Nassiri who never dies

Because in him is the spirit of God

And God is the prophets’ luck

It is my fortune that I am the neighbour of Godhead

….

It is my misfortune that the cross

Is the eternal ladder to our tomorrow!

Who am I to say to you

What I say to you

Who am I?

I could have not been inspired

Inspiration is the luck of the lonely souls

The poem is a dice throw

On a board of darkness

That may or may not get glow

Words fall

Like feathers on the sand

I did not plan the poem

I only obeyed its rhythm

 

To life I say: slow down, wait for me

Till in my cup the drunkeness has dried

There are flowers in the garden, flowers to all

The air cannot escape the flower

Wait for me

So that the nightingales don’t escape me

And I don’t break the rhythm

The singers stretch the cords of their lutes in the square

Ready for the song of farewell

Slow down

Long live life!

 

It is the traveller’s luck that hope

Is the twin of despair

Or its spontaneous poetry

When the sky looks grey

And I see a flower appear all of a sudden

From the cracks of a wall

I don’t say: the sky is grey

I contemplate the flower

And say: What a day!

To two of my friends I say

At the gate of night:

If we have to dream

Let it be like us, simple

Like: we have a dinner together after two days

The three of us

Celebrating the truth of the prophecy in our dream

That none of the three of us is lost

For the last two days

Let us celebrate the sonata of the moon

And the kindness of death saw us together, happy

And so it lowered its gaze!

I don’t say: life farther away is real

With places of fantasy

But I say: life here is possible

And by chance, the land became a holy land

Not because its lakes,  its heights,  its trees

Are similar to the gardens in Heaven

But because there was a prophet who walked there

And prayed on a rock and it cried

And the mountain fell in fear of God,

Unconscious

And by chance the hill slopes of a country

Became a museum of nonsense

Because thousands of soldiers died there

From both sides in defence of the two killers

Who said: Go!

And they waited for the spoils in two silky tents on both sides –

How often soldiers die without knowing until now

Who was the victorious one!

And by chance some storytellers lived and said:

If the others beat the others

Our human history would have different headlines

O green land,  O apple – ‘I love you when you are green’

Moving in a wave of light and water, green

Your night is green

Your dawn is green

Plant me tenderly …

Like the tenderness of a mother’s hand

In a handful of air

I’m one of your seeds,  green

This poem is not written by one poet

It could have not been lyrical

Who am I to say to you

What I say to you?

I could have not been me

I could have not been here

My plane could have crashed

In the morning

It is my fortune that I sleep till mid-day

So I went to the airport late

I could have not seen Lebanon and Cairo

The Louvre and the enchanting cities

If I was one to walk slowly, my shadow could have been cut from

the wakeful cedar by a bullet

If I was one to walk fast, I could have been torn into pieces

To become a fleeting thought

If I was one to dream too much,  I could have lost my memory.

It is my fortune that I sleep alone

So that I listen to the voice of my body

And believe my talent in discovering pain

And call the physician

Ten minutes before I die

Ten minutes,  enough to live, by chance

And disappoint the void

Who am I to disappoint the void?

Who am I?

Who am I?

 

 

My Mother

I long for my mother's bread
My mother's coffee
Her touch.
Childhood memories grow up in me
Day after day.
I must be worth my life
At the hour of my death -
Worth the tears of my mother.
And if I do come back one day
Take me as a veil to your eyelashes
Cover my bones with the grass.
Blessed by your footsteps
Bind us together
With a lock of your hair
With a thread that trails from the back of your dress.
I might become immortal
Become a God
If I touched the depths of your heart.
If I come back
Use me as wood to feed your fire
As the clothesline on the roof of your house.
Without your blessing
I am too weak to stand.
I am old.
Give me back the star maps of childhood
So that I
Along with the swallows
Can chart the path
Back to your waiting nest.

 

translated by Sayed Gouda