Exile

Samih Al- Qasim

The Will of a Man Dying in Exile

Light the fire so I can see in the mirror of the flames
The courtyard, the bridge
And the golden meadows.
Light the fire so I can see my tears
On the night of the massacre,
So I can see your sister’s corpse
Whose heart is a bird ripped up by foreign tongues,
By foreign winds.
Light the fire so I can see your sister’s corpse,
So I can see jasmine
As a shroud.
The moon
As an incense burner
On the night of the massacre.
Light the fire so I can see myself dying.
My suffering before the jasmine turns
Into a witness
Light the fire so you can see
Light the fi…

Modern Poetry of the Arab World, Transl. and ed. by Abdulah al-Udhari, Penguin Books, Harmonsdworth, 1986.

Mahmoud Darwish

How far is far?

How far is far?
How many ways to get there?
We walk

And walk towards meaning
And don’t arrive
It is a mirage
guide to the confused

to distant water
futile and heroic
We walk, and in the desert
We grow wiser

And don’t say: ‘Because the wilderness is perfection’
But our wisdom needs a song
With a lively tempo
so that hope doesn’t flag
How far is far?
How many ways to get there?

A River Dies of Thirst (Diaries) – (transl. from the Arabic by Catherine Cobham) Saqi Books, London, 2009, 48