حواء’s Reviews > Enemy of the Sun: Poetry of Palestinian Resistance > Status Update

and Fairuz’s voice
scourging us with songs:
My profession is sadness and waiting
waiting for that which never comes
the flowers of time have disappeared
for twenty years I
lived on sadness and hope

My anger drips oil and honey
my pain bears almonds, flouts and roses
so jail my piece of bread
I defy

I was the professor of mathematics
The blind singer, the guitar
I was the woodcutter, the hunter, and
Among other things, the shouts, the forest, the groom
I was the yards, the vineyards, the fortune teller
I was the student of night, of the stars,
Under my cover lived the voice of the tribes,
Under my blanket lived the planters’ village,
The glistening of the grass,
The clanging of the picks and the grain harvesters

We refuse, after today, to be innocent like a lamb
we refuse to remain dizzy and capricious
oh poetry, be angry
oh prose, be bitter
oh mind, be rebellious
lest we all become a flock of refugees.

Oh my sad Homeland
You have changed me overnight
From a poet of love and longing
To one who writes with a knife.

I carried you in my diaries
Inspiration for the fire of my words
The food for my thoughts
And in your name I shout in the valleys:
Invaders’ horses!— I met them
Though the times have changed
Beware—Beware hooves and stones
I destroyed the big idols
The thunderbolt has struck the flint
I shall fill the expanses of Sham
With my songs