Unfortunately, It Was Paradise: Selected Poems

by Mahmoud Darwish, Sinan Antoon (Editor), Amira El-Zein (Editor)

Mahmoud Darwish is a literary rarity: at once critically acclaimed as one of the most important poets in the Arabic language, and beloved as the voice of his people. A legend in Palestine, his lyrics are sung by fieldworkers and schoolchildren. He has assimilated some of the world's oldest literary traditions while simultaneously struggling to open new possibilities for poetry. This collection spans Darwish's entire career, nearly four decades, revealing an impressive range of expression and form. A splendid team of translators has collaborated with the poet on these new translations, which capture Darwish's distinctive voice and spirit. Fady Joudah s foreword, new to this edition, addresses Darwish s enduring legacy following his death in 2008.

Genres: Poetry, Middle East, Nonfiction, Classics, 21st Century, History, Ebooks

224 pages, Kindle Edition

First published December 29, 2002

About the author

محمود درويش
Mahmoud Darwish was a respected Palestinian poet and author who won numerous awards for his literary output and was regarded as the Palestinian national poet. In his work, Palestine became a metaphor for the loss of Eden, birth and resurrection, and the anguish of dispossession and exile.

The Lotus Prize (1969; from the Union of Afro-Asian Writers)
Lenin Peace Prize (1983; from the USSR)
The Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters (1993; from France)
The Lannan Foundation Prize for Cultural Freedom (2001)
Prince Claus Awards (2004)
"Bosnian stećak" (2007)
Golden Wreath of Struga Poetry Evenings (2007)
The International Forum for Arabic Poetry prize (2007)

محمود درويش هو شاعرٌ فلسطيني وعضو المجلس الوطني الفلسطيني التابع لمنظمة التحرير الفلسطينية، وله دواوين شعرية مليئة بالمضامين الحداثية. ولد عام 1941 في قرية البروة وهي قرية فلسطينية تقع في الجليل قرب ساحل عكا, حيث كانت أسرته تملك أرضًا هناك. خرجت الأسرة برفقة اللاجئين الفلسطينيين في العام 1948 إلى لبنان، ثم عادت متسللة عام 1949 بعد توقيع اتفاقيات الهدنة، لتجد القرية مهدمة وقد أقيم على أراضيها موشاف (قرية زراعية إسرائيلية)"أحيهود". وكيبوتس يسعور فعاش مع عائلته في قرية الجديدة.

بعد إنهائه تعليمه الثانوي في مدرسة يني الثانوية في كفرياسيف انتسب إلى الحزب الشيوعي الإسرائيلي وعمل في صحافة الحزب مثل الإتحاد والجديد التي أصبح في ما بعد مشرفًا على تحريرها، كما اشترك في تحرير جريدة الفجر التي كان يصدرها مبام.

أحد أهم الشعراء الفلسطينيين والعرب الذين ارتبط اسمهم بشعر الثورة والوطن. يعتبر درويش أحد أبرز من ساهم بتطوير الشعر العربي الحديث وإدخال الرمزية فيه. في شعر درويش يمتزج الحب بالوطن بالحبيبة الأنثى. قام بكتابة وثيقة إعلان الاستقلال الفلسطيني التي تم إعلانها في الجزائر.

Tras una juventud dentro de la Palestina ocupada, años salpicados por numerosos arestos, se trasladó a Egipto y después al Líbano para realizar su sueño de renovación poética. Será en su exilio en Paris, tras tener que abandonar forzosamente el Líbano, donde logre su madurez poético y logre un reconocimiento ante los ojos occidentales.

En 1996, tras los acuerdos de Oslo para la autonomía de los territorios de Gaza y Cisjordania, dimite como ministro de Cultura de la Organización para la Liberación de Palestina y regresa a Ramallah. Allí dirige la revista literaria Al Karmel, cuytos archivos fueron destruidos por el ejército israelí durante el asedio a la ciudad en el año 2002.

Reviews

[Ammara Abid · Rating 5 out of 5]

A man is travelling in the desert under the scorching heat of sun, suddenly dark clouds gathered, gust of wind start blowing & carried away all the heat. Moreover, the clouds pouring rain washes the man's soul from worries and hardships.
Mahmoud's poetry is that scroching heat of sun alongwith the gust of wind & dark clouds. That can't be blown & poured down always but from time to time it happened.
After a while it happened.
His words make us stand & realize the facts of life with such a mesmerising manner that you got captivated in his poems and there's no escape.
You have to suffer
You have to bear
You have to accept
You must know the truth
In spite of all that
You have to love.

My first book by him & I absolutely adore his collection and love his writing style. I'm really glad that I got a chance to read this brilliant book.

'What does life say to Mahmoud
Darwish?
You lived, fell in love, learned, and all those you will finally love are dead? '


'My longing weeps for everything. My longing shoots back at me, to kill or be killed.'


'We Travel Like All People
We travel like everyone else, but we return to nothing. As if travel were
a path of clouds. We buried our loved ones in the shade of clouds and between roots of trees.
We said to our wives: Give birth for hundreds of years, so that we may end this journey
within an hour of a country, within a meter of the impossible!
We travel in the chariots of the Psalms, sleep in the tents of the prophets, and are born again in the language of Gypsies.
We measure space with a hoopoe’s beak, and sing so that distance may forget us.
We cleanse the moonlight. Your road is long, so dream of seven women to bear
this long journey on your shoulders. Shake the trunks of palm trees for them.
You know the names, and which one will give birth to the Son of Galilee.
Ours is a country of words: Talk. Talk. Let me rest my road against a stone.
Ours is a country of words: Talk. Talk. Let me see an end to this journey. '


'An eagle settles on our bodies, and we chase after dreams. May we find them.
They soar behind us to find us here. There is no escape!
We live our death. This half-death is our triumph. '


'In this hymn we lay a dream, we raise a victory sign, we hold a key to the last door,
to lock ourselves in a dream. But we will survive because life is life. '


'We are captives of what we love, what we desire, and what we are. '


'Let us be kindhearted! Take me to the sea at dusk.
Let me hear what the sea tells you when it returns to itself in peace.
I won’t change. I will embrace a wave and say:
Take me to the sea again.
This is what the fearful do:
when a burning star torments them, they go to the sea.'


'Death, O my shadow who leads me, O my third person,
emerald and olivine’s irresolute color,
blood of a peacock, sniper of the wolf’s heart,
sickness of imagination, have a seat.
Leave your hunting gear at the window and hang your heavy key chain on the door.
Mighty one, don’t gaze into my veins looking for some fatal flaw.
You are stronger than my breathing, stronger than medicine, and the strong honey of bodily love.
You don’t need some sickness in order to kill me.
So be nobler than the insects.
Be yourself—transparent, a clear message from the Unseen.
And like love, be a raging storm among trees.
Do not sit in the doorways like a beggar or a tax collector.
Do not become a traffic cop in the streets.
Be powerful, of well-tempered steel, and take off that fox mask.
Be gallant and knightly, and launch your mortal assaults.
Say whatever you wish to say:
I emerge from meaning to meaning.
Life is fluid, I distill it.
I introduce it to my domination and my measure.'


'I have work to do for the afterlife, as if tomorrow I will not be alive.
I have work to do for the eternal presence of today.
Hence I listen, little by little, to the ants in my heart:
Help me bear the brunt of my endurance.
I even listen to the gasping scream of the stone: Free my body.
In the violin, I see longing migrate from an earthly country to a heavenly one.
I hold my dear one, eternity, in the palm of a woman’s hand.
First, I was created. After a while, I fell in love.
Then I got bored to death.
Later on, in my grave, I opened my eyes
and saw the grasses mirroring me from time to time.
What use is Spring, then, if it does not bring joy to the dead,
and if it does not restore life and the bloom of oblivion after life?
That is one way to solve the riddle of poetry, the riddle of my tender poetry at least.
Dreams are our sole utterance.'


'As if I am. As if I am not.
Every time I listen to the heart the words of the Unseen flood me, and trees grow tall in me.
I fly from dream to dream but I am without end.
A few thousand poetic years ago, I was born in a darkness of white linen,
but I could not distinguish between the dream of myself and my self.'


'In order to fight the beast in you, I asked a woman to give you milk.
I was unjust. But you were given pleasure, and you gave in.
Be kind to me, Enkidu. Go back to the dead.
It’s possible we might find an answer
to the question of who we are when we are alone.
The life of a single man is not complete,
and I am in dire need of an answer to this question.
Whom can I ask about crossing this river?
So rise and lift me up, O brother in salt!
When you sleep, do you know you are sleeping?
Rise up! Enough.
Move before the wise men, like foxes, surround me.
All is vanity. Your life is a treasure, so live it, richly.
It’s a single moment, promising its own sap—the distilled blood of the prairie.
Live your waking, not your dream: Everything dies.
Live your life in a beloved woman.
Life is your body, not some illusion.
Wait for a child to carry in your soul.
For us, procreation is immortality.
And all is vanity and mortal, or mortal and vanity.


'What was mine: my yesterday.
What will be mine: the distant tomorrow,
and the return of the wandering soul as if nothing had happened.'


'I don’t dream of anything now.
I desire only to desire.
I dream only of desiring harmony.'

[Edita · Rating 5 out of 5]

I will slog over this endless road to its end.
Until my heart stops, I will slog over this endless, endless road
with nothing to lose but the dust, what has died in me, and a row of palms
pointing toward what vanishes. I will pass the row of palms.
The wound does not need its poet to paint the blood of death like a pomegranate!
On the roof of neighing, I will cut thirty openings for meaning
so that you may end one trail only so as to begin another.
Whether this earth comes to an end or not, we'll slog over this endless road.
More tense than a bow. Our steps, be arrows. Where were we a moment ago?
Shall we join, in a while, the first arrow? The spinning wind whirled us.
So, what do you say?
I say: I will slog over this endless road to its end and my own.

*

Perhaps you ask only for ambiguity when you turn your back to the river.
There, an autumn sprinkles water onto a stag from a passing cloud.
There, on what you left behind of the crumbs of your departure.
The Milky Way is your ambiguity, the dust of nameless stars.
Your ambiguity is a night in pearls lighting nothing but water.
As for speech , it can light the night of someone setting forth
between two odes and two rows of palms, with the single word: love.

I am the one who saw his tomorrow when he saw you.
I am the one who saw gospels written by the last idolater,
on the slopes of Gilead before the old countries, and after.
I am the cloud returning to a fig tree which bears my name,
just as the sword bears the face of the slaughtered.
Perhaps when you turn your shadow to me, you bestow unto metaphor
the meaning of something that is about to happen.

[Pau · Rating 5 out of 5]

i wish i understood arabic and could read the original version 🥺

[Hala · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was very sceptical about reading this book. I wished I could read the Arabic poems but I knew most would be lost on me as Darwish's language is too strong for me to understand. I also thought the translation would kill all the beauty but I was wrong.
It could be that some of the beauty of his words were lost in translation, but most were still there and I was left in awe. Very beautiful, very well-translated, very moving.

[Mus✨ · Rating 5 out of 5]

From the river to the sea 🇵🇸🇵🇸

Beautiful,Poignant and Haunting! Any attempt of mine at writing a review of these magnificent pieces’s of work would not be able to do them any justice. My only wish whilst reading this was that one day, I will be able to read these poems in Arabic because if they are this beautiful and meaningful translated, I can’t begin to imagine how much better they are in their original language. Poetry is resistance and Mahmoud’s poems are powerful symbols of resistance and resilience. الله يرحمه

[bunny ᥫ᭡ · Rating 5 out of 5]

some people are blessed with the ability to encapsulate time into words - and some even more blessed to wrap the present into a poem

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

For some reason, my initial response to Darwish's poetry when I first started reading it was negative. It seemed gloomy and hopeless. But after a short break I came back to it and was strangely enchanted. "Strangely," because Darwish's poetry is, for me, like no other other literary landscape I have ever visited. It is big, somewhat like T.S. Eliot's but less densely populated, which makes it feel even bigger, and it is full of all sorts of optical illusions that make me go pleasurably cross-eyed, like when staring looking for a hidden 3-D picture.

It is tempting to interpret Darwish's poetry in the context of the Middle East and its medieval mathematicians. The poet is constantly dividing and multiplying things into each other, with the result that you get flashes here and there of eternity—of strangely rippling surfaces that hold beneath them incomprehensible depths.

Yet, together with the awe-inspiring grandeur of much of his poetry are lines of warm, ravishing beauty achieved with apparent simplicity, lines that remind me of the simple but memorable similes of the Song of Solomon.

Then there is the wisdom throughout his poetry that makes you want to write lines down on the frontispiece, page after page, in case you lose them.

In conclusion, reading this anthology was like encountering one of those clusters of massive wind turbines you see in remote areas: towering, majestic, slightly menacing, beyond, somehow not belonging, but touched with the breezes, smells, songs, storms and hues of their setting. Reading the poems then looking at the professorial, twinkly-eyed photo of Darwish on the inside dust jacket makes for quite a disconnect. Forgive me, but I was expecting wild eyes and whiskers (robe, staff, sandals!)

Unfortunately, It Was Paradise is a keeper.

[Jonfaith · Rating 4 out of 5]

If there must be a moon, let it be high,
a high moon made in Baghdad, neither Arab, nor Persian,
nor claimed by the goddesses all around us.

4.5 stars. I hesitate to confess that I was preparing to abandon this collection after thirty pages. I found it clumsy with simple rhetorical images. Alas, matters grew more intricate, memory began to unroll and the revealed canvas was epic. The Rubáiyát was recalled, as were lives in exile, nocturnal despair and the thrill of erudition. I didn't want these to end.

[༘⋆ isabelle ༘⋆ · Rating 5 out of 5]

"The universe is smaller than a butterfly's wing
in the boundless expanse of the heart."

"We are of clay and light.
Did you recognize the crown above your head?
It's my mother's tomb."

"I know what the dove means when it lays its eggs on the rifle's muzzle."

"Would that I had a different present,
I would hold the keys to my past.
And would that I had a past within me,
I would possess all tomorrows."

"My prison cell grows by a hair to make room for the song of a dove."

"Will there be enough justice left over
for us to be just ourselves tomorrow?
—How will jasmine heal me tomorrow?
—How will jasmine heal me tomorrow?"

"...there, where we were young and first in love,
like Romeo and Juliet learning the language of Shakespeare."

"May the shepherds discover a well in the heart of song.
May life suddenly open on the wing of a butterfly fluttering over a rhyme for those who do not care about meaning."

"Teach me poetry, that I may learn to wander Homer's lands."

"There is no name for what life should be, except
what you did and what you do to my soul."

🕊

[anastasia tasou · Rating 4 out of 5]

beautiful and moving poetry. i think some of these poems were maybe lost in translation for me personally, and i wish i could read them in arabic as they were written. but still a gorgeous little collection

[Emma · Rating 4 out of 5]

Poetry is something I feel okay with not totally "getting." Like, if I can't immediately write a 5-page essay explaining the underlying meaning of a poem (even though maybe I should be able to, since I was an English major), that's fine. I don't need to do that to find it beautiful, and I found much of this collection beautiful. Darwish (and his myriad of English translators and poets; it apparently took a village, whether or not that was necessary) gorgeously expresses how it feels to live as part of a displaced ethnic group, finding both tragedy and joy in his experiences. A couple of those twenty-pagers took a while to read but it was worth it.

[Yasemin Burcu · Rating 5 out of 5]

ağlıyorum baya güzeldi :’)

[Heba Rahman · Rating 5 out of 5]

There is no name for what life should be, except what you did, what you do to my soul.

Sir? Are you okay? Who hurt you?

I mean, I know who did, but still. Still.

From the river to the sea.

[Soos · Rating 5 out of 5]

this rubbed my aching palestinian heart

[Carol · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found Darwish's writing really moving - especially selections from Fewer Roses.

The mood of the translated texts are heavy with grief, loss, being lost and exiled, cast adrift, homeless and landless. The simple starkness of "Athens Airport" "What is your address? A woman of our group says: My village is the bundle on my back."

The poet holds on, almost desperately to memories, mood, language and
imagination to recreate his paradise lost. Time is "timeless" as if stunted and standing still -- locked, in shock, confusion and chaos -- trying to make sense of this endless rape of the peoples and their country. He seeks validation, empty as it is, over and over, in "I Talk Too Much" with his repeated and plaintive appeal:

"Is it true ladies and gentlemen, that the earth of Man is for all human beings?"
I am struck by the openness of spirit and that is transformed into
embrace, maybe forgiveness? for the incomprehensible invasion and occupation and failure to see his people's humanity. "He embraces his murderer. May he win his heart: Do you feel angrier if I survive? brother...my brother! What did I do to make you destroy me?... I will never cease embracing you. And I will never release you."

Perhaps, the books title is a bitter irony and lament that it is both the beauty and the "misfortune" that Palestine was indeed a paradise that made his land so desirable, so ripe for being occupied and appropriated for all its richness and significance and the center of so much bloodshed and destruction.


Reading Darwish's work in its non-native language, and not knowing details of the history of the people of this land makes me wonder how much of the texture and depth is lost in translation. Having limited knowledge of the many references made and significance of those references (eg: horses, hoopoes, mother's coffee..)probably means that this reader is missing out on a great deal of the nuances of his creation. But his poetry does offer the novice reader a window into Palestinian life, thoughts, emotions, sensuality, dreams, and the humanity that is purposefully made absent from/in US consciousness. Darwish offers us beauty, complexity, compassion, sensuousness, thoughts and images beyond war, violence and destruction that are the dominant images of Palestinians, stripped of their humanity by US media propaganda.

[seo · Rating 4 out of 5]

something that always strikes me about darwish’s poetry is the lyrical imagery in them and the vivid detail afforded to nature and its landscapes. through his words alone, i feel as though i am transported to the palestine of darwish’s memories, dotted with olive trees and scented with the aroma of oranges and figs. it is beautifully tragic when juxtaposed with the theme of exile that runs through his poetry.

something in particular that i enjoyed about this collection of poems was the attention to mythology. darwish includes homages to canaanite gods and mesopotamian legends alongside references to the abrahamic religions: cain and abel, ishmael and his lute, and the hoopoe that carried messages between king solomon and the queen of sheba in the qu’ran.

[Giuliana Chamedes · Rating 5 out of 5]

beautiful!!
darwish is a palestinian poet. longing, and the (impossible) quest for a home, are the recurring themes in these wonderfully translated poems. these poems build a deep and immediate relationship with you as you read them -- they give you the impression of walking slowly alongside a smiling, if teary-eyed, ageless bard, who contains boundless wisdom, and is able to sing you to sleep or sing you to revolution in one second flat.

[gabrielle · Rating 5 out of 5]

August 3, 2025

It has been 666 days since war has broken out between Israel and Palestine, resulting in a genocide that has so far killed over 62,700 Palestinians. 28,204 days since the Nakba– the destruction and permanent displacement of Palestinians from their homeland- began. And 6203 days since Mahmoud Darwish– one of Palestine’s national poets– passed away.

As someone who knows relatively little about the history of Israeli settler colonialism and Palestinian resistance, this anthology allowed me to understand a little more about what it feels like to be displaced, in permanent exile from one’s homeland, forced to watch from a distance as atrocities take place to one’s people, to one’s land every day.

Darwish writes with such beauty. I have a feeling that the beauty I glean from his words translated into English is but a fraction of its true splendor in his native Arabic (although the translators have already done a great job). His poems feel timeless, tinged with melancholy and hope at the same time. They make me question what it means to truly own something whether that be one’s body or one’s identity. They make me question what it means to truly love someone or something, what suffering is born out of that desire? They make me question what place poetry has in a world of such casualty cruelty and complicity.

There is so much to say about Darwish’s work. But I think the most important thing is that everybody who is trying to educate themselves about Palestine, should at least read one of his poems.

[Dary · Rating 4 out of 5]

Do not frighten the birds in her braided hair.

~

Let me polish my weapons with the salt of tears.
Let there be tears, Enkidu, to help our dead mourn the living. To which do I belong?
Who sleeps now, Enkidu? The man I am, or you?
My gods are grasping the wind.

~

I don't like sensuality, for it darkens the nuances of meaning in my cells and leaves my body lonely and hollow, haunted by the first forests. There is a room in the echo like the room of my prison cell, a room where one talks to the self.

[Emily Morgan · Rating 3 out of 5]

On This Earth
We have on this earth what makes life worth living: Aprils hesitation, the aroma of bread
at dawn, a woman's point of view about men, the works of Aeschylus, the beginning
of love, grass on a stone, mothers living on a flute's sigh and the invaders fear of memories.
We have on this earth what makes life worth living: the final days of September, a woman
keeping her apricots ripe after forty, the hour of sunlight in prison, a cloud reflecting a swarm
of creatures, the peoples' applause for those who face death with a smile, a tyrant's fear of songs.
We have on this earth what makes life worth living: on this earth, the Lady of Earth,
mother of all beginnings and ends. She was called Palestine. Her name later became
Palestine. My Lady, because you are my Lady, I deserve life.

[Patrick Duggan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mahmoud Darwish is the somewhat official poet laureate of Palestine, and his recent selected poems Unfortunately, It Was Paradise is a dynamic lyric voice full of wild imagery mixed with the fury of scripture. His voice is calm poverty in a storm of mideast chaos, a man who lived through and mourns the first Israeli invasion of Lebanon, but was himself inspired to write by the Israeli poet Yehuda Amichai. With Israel currently shelling the entire state of Lebanon into the ashes of history, and nobody (read: America) really seeming to care, it seems an appropriate and unsettling book for the current geopolitical situation. Three hours of your time you won't regret having spent.

[April ♡ · Rating 5 out of 5]

Darwish is an international treasure, his poems are in a league of their own, so I did expect this collection to be good, especially when I read Sinan Antoon’s name and found out that he’s involved in this project, I was even more encouraged to read.
And I’m so glad I did! In Arabic or English, Darwish’s words take you to another dimension; funny thing, when I came across a poem that I’ve already knew, and read in Arabic I felt like running into an old friend in a new town.

[Helen · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really wish I could read these poems in the original language. I feel like there's something lost in the meaning and structure in the translation, and I found it difficult to connect to these poems in any way.

[Angela · Rating 3 out of 5]

Best book title ever, no contest

[Ash · Rating 5 out of 5]

If his poetry is this heart-achingly beautiful in English, I can only imagine how wonderful it is in Darwish’s native language.

[Liz · Rating 5 out of 5]

poetry is resistance!
the mural is my favourite poem among all of the selected ones but many still left me with many thoughts and feelings. i wish i was more with mahmoud darwish and his work (arabic poetry as well) as it has many references that are harder to understand. here are some of my favourite parts:

We are captives, even if our wheat grows over the fences,
and swallows rise from our broken chains.
We are captives of what we love, what we desire, and what we are.

But those who travel to nowhere have no chance of return,
to become lost again in loss.

Perhaps we will fly one day...
People are birds unable to fly.
Ignorance makes the earth larger.
The earth grows smaller when we realize our ignorance,
but we are the descendants of this clay.

You have tortured us, O love.
In vain you drive us from journey to journey.
You have tossed us away from our kin,
from our water and air, and you have ruined us.
You have emptied the sunset of sunset.
You've robbed us of our first words
and looted the peach tree of our days.
You have stripped us of our days.
O love, you have tortured us and sacked our lives.
You have tossed us away from everything
and then taken cover behind Autumn's leaves.
You sacked our lives, O love!
You've left not a thing to guide us to you,
or whose shadow we can kiss.
Leave in the wheat fields of our souls one grain of your love.
Do not break the cosmic glass prison of our supplication.
Do not worry. Do not raise a hue and cry.
Calm down, so that we may witness
the cosmic wedding of the elements, an offering to you.

O love, how bitterly you tortured us and estranged us from our very self!
You have stripped us even of our names, O love!

Longing is the place of exile. Our love is a place of exile.
Our wine is a place of exile
and a place of exile is the history of this heart.
How many times have we told the fragrance of the place
to be still so we can rest and sleep?

How many times have we told the trees
of the place to wipe off the invader's mask
so we might find a place? Nowhere is the place
that distances its soul from its history.
A place of exile is the soul
that distances us from our land and takes us to our love.
A place of exile is the soul
that distances us from our soul and takes us to the stranger.
Is there a sword that hasn't yet been sheathed in our flesh?

Poetry is a place of exile.
We dream and forget where we were when we wake.

We'll return, when we return, to see her!

I dream of white tulips, streets of song, a house of light.
I need a kind heart, not a bullet.
I need a bright day, not a mad fascist moment of triumph.
I need a child to cherish a day of laughter, not a weapon of war.
I came to live for rising suns, not to witness their setting.

An express train to cross the lakes. In every pocket, keys to a house and a family photograph. All the
passengers return to their families, but we do not return to any home.

[☆ Lia ☆ · Rating 4 out of 5]

so, i started this about 6 years after I first came upon mahmoud darwish's quotes on tumblr. grateful i did. took me some time. grief is everlasting, because love is.
some quotes from this collection ahead:


My soul is light. My body is heavily burdened with memories and with place.

Longing is the place of exile. Our love is a place of exile.

When July comes, jasmine carries me to a street leading nowhere.

I will love and I will survive.

Allow me into your forests of desire, embrace me, hold me close.

Every heart is a cosmos of mysteries.

Love transforms us. We become an ode opening its windows to be recited and finished by doves. We become a meaning that returns sap to invisible trees on our souls' embankments.

~
a quote not from here which i'll add anyway, because it is so important to me:

"The war will end. The leaders will shake hands. The old woman will keep waiting for her martyred son. That girl will wait for her beloved husband. And those children will wait for their heroic father. I don't know who sold our homeland. But I saw who paid the price."

[Ayesha (Seokjin's Version) ☾ · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Lanterns, but not for us, to see our love waiting in the smoke. An express train to cross the lakes. In every pocket, keys to a house and a family photograph."

This book stands reason for the fact that we shouldn't judge authors based on Pinterest quotes. Darwish for the longest time has been on my TBR. I knew that his talents wouldn't be limited to the two lines love poems that I see on the internet. And boy, was I in for a pleasant surprise.

Darwish doesn't write only about love, yes he talks about love, he talks about love for his land, love for his language, love for his friends, love for myths, love as freedom, love as captivity, and love as the destination. Darwish is haunting and brilliant.

I do think that this book suffers from being a 'selected poems' book. Because some of these poems were breathtaking while others were good.

Anyways, read Darwish.

[Liz · Rating 5 out of 5]

absolutely incredible selection of poetry holy shit

Some favourite lines:

I am the stranger. Tired of plodding across
the Milky Way to my beloved.

All is bound to pass.
All rivers flow to the sea,
yet the sea is not filled.

I am the one who saw his tomorrow when he saw you.

What do you say? You'll kill me so the enemy can go home to our home
and descend again into the law of the jungle?

[Brenna (: · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think Mahmoud Darwish will be my favorite Arabic poet. Even though I can’t relate to the feeling of losing your homeland or experiencing war, I can still appreciate the rawness and beauty of his work. There were some especially gorgeous lines in this book.

“We have on this Earth what makes life worth living”

“There is no name for what life should be, except what you did and what you do to my soul”