Winner of the PEN USA Literary Award for Translation
Mahmoud Darwish was that rare literary phenomenon: a poet both acclaimed by critics as one of the most important poets in the Arab world and beloved by his readers. His language—lyrical and tender—helped to transform modern Arabic poetry into a living metaphor for the universal experiences of exile, loss, and identity. The poems in this collection, constructed from the cadence and imagery of the Palestinian struggle, shift
between the most intimate individual experience and the burdens of history and collective memory. Brilliantly translated by Fady Joudah, If I Were Another—which collects the greatest epic works of Darwish's mature years—is a powerful yet elegant work by a master poet and demonstrates why Darwish was one of the most celebrated poets of his time and was hailed as the voice and conscience of an entire people.
Winner of the PEN USA Literary Award for Translation
Mahmoud Darwish was that rare literary phenomenon: a poet both acclaimed by critics as one of the most important poets in the Arab world and beloved by his readers. His language—lyrical and tender—helped to transform modern Arabic poetry into a living metaphor for the universal experiences of exile, loss, and identity. The poems in this collection, constructed from the cadence and imagery of the Palestinian struggle, shift
between the most intimate individual experience and the burdens of history and collective memory. Brilliantly translated by Fady Joudah, If I Were Another—which collects the greatest epic works of Darwish's mature years—is a powerful yet elegant work by a master poet and demonstrates why Darwish was one of the most celebrated poets of his time and was hailed as the voice and conscience of an entire people.
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Overview
Winner of the PEN USA Literary Award for Translation
Mahmoud Darwish was that rare literary phenomenon: a poet both acclaimed by critics as one of the most important poets in the Arab world and beloved by his readers. His language—lyrical and tender—helped to transform modern Arabic poetry into a living metaphor for the universal experiences of exile, loss, and identity. The poems in this collection, constructed from the cadence and imagery of the Palestinian struggle, shift
between the most intimate individual experience and the burdens of history and collective memory. Brilliantly translated by Fady Joudah, If I Were Another—which collects the greatest epic works of Darwish's mature years—is a powerful yet elegant work by a master poet and demonstrates why Darwish was one of the most celebrated poets of his time and was hailed as the voice and conscience of an entire people.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781466884229 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Farrar, Straus and Giroux |
| Publication date: | 06/04/2024 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 236 |
| Sales rank: | 733,633 |
| File size: | 441 KB |
About the Author
Mahmoud Darwish was born in the village of al-Birweh in what was then Western Galilee, Palestine. He published more than twenty volumes of poetry and ten volumes of prose. He was the recipient of numerous awards for both his poetry and his political activism.
Fady Joudah is a physician, poet, and translator. His translation of Mahmoud Darwish's The Butterfly's Burden was a finalist for the 2008 PEN Award for Poetry in Translation.
Read an Excerpt
If I Were Another
By Mahmoud Darwish, Fady Joudah
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Copyright © 2009 Mahmoud Darwish EstateAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4668-8422-9
CHAPTER 1
I SEE WHAT I WANT
1990
... As I look behind me in this night
into the tree leaves and the leaves of life
as I stare into the water's memory and the memory of sand
I do not see in this night
other than the end of this night
the ticking clock gnaws at my life by the second
and shortens the life of this night
nothing of the night or of me remains to wrestle over ... or about
but the night goes back to its night
and I fall into this shadow's pit
RUBAIYAT
1.
I see what I want of the field ... I see
braids of wheat combed by the wind, and I close my eyes:
this mirage leads to a nahawand
and this serenity to lapis
2.
I see what I want of the sea ... I see
the rise of seagulls at sunset, and I close my eyes:
this loss leads to an Andalus
and this sail is the pigeons' prayer for me ...
3.
I see what I want of the night ... I see
the end of this long corridor by some city's gates.
I'll toss my notebook on the sidewalk of cafés, and seat this absence
on a chair aboard one of the ships
4.
I see what I want of the soul: the face of stone
as lightning scratches it. Green is the land ... green, the land of my soul.
Wasn't I a child once playing by the edge of the well?
I am still playing ... this vastness is my meadow, and the stones my wind
5.
I see what I want of peace ... I see
a gazelle, grass, and a rivulet ... I close my eyes:
This gazelle sleeps on my arms
and its hunter sleeps near the gazelle's children in a distant place
6.
I see what I want of war ... I see
our ancestors' limbs squeeze the springs green in a stone,
and our fathers inherit the water but bequeath nothing. So I close my eyes:
The country within my hands is of my hands
7.
I see what I want of prison: a flower's days
passed through here to guide two strangers within me
to a bench in the garden, then I close my eyes:
Spacious is the land, beautiful through a needle's eye
8.
I see what I want of lightning ... I see
the vegetation of the fields crumble the shackles, O joy!
Joy for the white almond song descending on the smoke of villages
like doves ... What we feed our children we share with the doves
9.
I see what I want of love ... I see
horses making the meadow dance, fifty guitars sighing, and a swarm
of bees suckling the wild berries, and I close my eyes
until I see our shadow behind this dispossessed place
10.
I see what I want of death: I love, and my chest splits
for a horse of Eros that leaps out of it white, running over clouds
and flying on endless vapor, circling the eternal blue ...
So do not stop me from dying, do not bring me back to a star of dust
11.
I see what I want of blood: I have seen the murdered
address the murderer who bullet-lit his heart: From now on
you shall remember only me. I, too, murdered you idly, and from now on
you shall remember only me ... you won't bear the roses of spring
12.
I see what I want of the theater of the absurd: beasts,
court judges, the emperor's hat, the masks of the era,
the color of the ancient sky, the palace dancer, the mayhem of armies.
Then I forget them all and remember only the victim behind the curtain
13.
I see what I want of poetry: in ancient times, we used to parade martyred
poets in sweet basil then return to their poetry safely. But in this age
of humming, movies, and magazines, we heap the sand on their poems
and laugh. And when we return we find them standing at our doorsteps ...
14.
I see what I want of dawn in the dawn ... I see
nations looking for their bread in other nations' bread. It is bread
that ravels us from the silk of sleepiness, and from the cotton of our dreams.
So is it from a grain of wheat that the dawn of life bursts ... and also the dawn of war?
15.
I see what I want of people: their desire to long
for anything, their lateness in getting to work,
and their hurry to return to their folk ...
and their need to say: Good Morning ...
TAKE CARE OF THE STAGS,FATHER
... Resigned to your father's steps I went looking for you, Father, there
at the burning of my fingers with the candles of your thorns, when
the sunset pruned the carob tree, and when we — your father and I —
were behind you as your parents.
You were hanging from your hands on the cactus in the plains
and our fears for you, like an eagle, hovered above you.
You must bequeath the sky from the sky.
You must bear a land like the skin of the soul punctured by chicory blossoms.
You must choose your ax out of their rifles that are upon you.
You must be partial, Father, to the profit of dew in your palms
and to your abandoned wheat around the military camps,
do as you please with your jailers' hearts, and resist despite the thorns,
when the neighing conquers you from the six directions, resist,
for the plains, the plains are yours.
... And my father is shy, Father, what does he say ... that you don't.
I spoke with him about himself but he gestured to the winter, hid something
in the ashes. Don't give me love, I whispered, I want to give the land
a gazelle instead. Explain your distant beginning for me, Father, to see you as I do,
a teacher of the book of earth, from Aleph to Ya', and plant me there.
Birth is a riddle, Father: it sprouts like oak and splits the rock within
the threshold of this naked scene then ascends ... then blackness breaks it.
We crawl then we're adolescent. The mares rise and gallop into vastness.
We tumble then we're quiescent. When were we born, Father, and when
will we die? But he, the shy one, doesn't reply, and time is in his hands, he sends it
to the wadi and brings it back, he's the garden in its simple stature.
He doesn't speak to me of the history of his days:
We were here before time and we shall remain here for the fields to become green.
Take care of the stags ... nurture them in the large courtyard of the house, Father!
But he turns his gaze away from me. Mends a grapevine. Offers
some wheat and water to the horse. Greets him slowly, cajoles him and whispers:
You're the purebred. He takes the mint my mother hands him. Smokes
his tobacco. Tallies the grape chandeliers and says to me: Settle down!
Then I doze on his knee on the numbness of fatigue ...
I recall the plants: the chrysanthemum flock leads me to Aleppo.
My imagination takes me past the mountain of the flute, I run after the flute
and run after the birds to learn to fly. I have hidden my secret
in what the forefathers say, there behind the hill. You have often distanced me
from what I try to be and not be ... you know
I want what the flowers give, not the salt. You have often brought me near
the distant star of futility, Father. Why didn't you for once in your life
call me: Son! ... so I would fly to you after school? Why didn't you try to raise me
as you raised your field into sesame, corn, and wheat? Is it because
what's in you of wars is a soldier's dread of the chrysanthemum in the houses?
Be my master so I may flee you to the shepherds on the hills.
Be my master for my mother to love me ...
for my brothers to forget the banana crescent.
Be my master that I may memorize more of the Quran ... love the feminine
and become her master and imprison her with me!
Be my master that I may see the guide.
You hid your heart from me, Father, so I'd grow up suddenly alone in the palm trees.
Trees, ideas, and a mizmar ... I will leap from your hands to departure
and march against the wind, against our sunset ... My exile is a land.
A land of desires, Canaanite, herding the stags and mountain goats ...
A land of words the pigeons carry to the pigeons ... and you're an exile.
An exile of incursions speech delivers to speech ... you're a land
of mint under my poems, drawing near and going far
in a conqueror's name, then again in a new conqueror's name, a ball
snatched by invaders and fixed above the ruins of temples and above the soldiers.
Ancient son of Canaan! if you were made of stone
the weather would have been different.
But they wrote their anthem over you, for you to become "he-you" the lonely.
No lily ever came to witness who was her martyr poet.
The historian stole my language and my lily, Father, and banished me
from the divine promise. And when I faced him with my ancestors'
bones, he cried: "My Lord ... my Lord
why didn't they all die so you would become mine alone ...?"
A cactus punctured your heart, Father. Do you forgive what I did with your heart
when I grew up alone, when I went alone to look upon the poem from afar?
Why do you rush now toward the great journey when you're the Torah of the roots?
You have filled the jars with the first of the sacred oil, and fashioned a vineyard
out of rock. You endlessly said: Do not leave for Sidon or Tyre.
I am coming, this instant, Father, dead or alive! ... Will you forgive my madness
with the birds of my questions about meaning? Will you forgive my longing
in this winter for a lavish suicide? I watched my heart and lost yours,
you had hidden it from me for too long, then I resorted to the moon.
Say: I love you ... before you doze, and before the rain comes tumbling down.
... Enmeshed in brown wool, leaning on the tree's steps
he gazes into his missing paradise, behind his hands, casts his shadow
over the dirt, his dirt, then pulls it ... he catches a chrysanthemum
with his aba's shadow, but cannot fool the thief of trees.
Is this my father who flings his arrows of shadow toward his stolen
dirt to snatch a chrysanthemum from it ... before nightfall?
How many new armies will occupy time?
They come to war within themselves in us, these princes, and we're the martyrs.
They come, build citadels upon citadels, then go, and we remain who we are.
This beast steals our skin and sleeps in it on our bedsheets, this beast
bites us then wails from the ache of longing for the eyes of chrysanthemum.
Land! why am I your strange visitor on the spears of those who come from smoke?
Land, I've never asked you whether the place has already left the place behind.
There is one meter between my blond fields and me ...
a scissor-meter that cuts my heart.
I am from here ... I saw my guts looking upon me through the corn fuzz.
I saw my memory counting the seeds of this field and the martyrs within it.
I am from here. I am right here ... I comb the olives in this autumn.
I am from here. And here I am. That's what my father shouted: I am from here.
And here I am. I am I. And here is here. I am I. And I am here. Here
I am. And I am I. Here I am. I am here. And here I am. I am I ...
Then echo approached. Broke the vastness. Its resurrection rose. An echo
finding an echo. And echo resounded: Forever here forever here ...
Then time became tomorrow, and the shape of echo appeared as a country,
and sent death back. So break the wall of the universe, Father, as an echo
surrounding echo; and explode:
I am
from
here
and here
is here
and I
am I
and here
I am
and I
am here.
The earth cracks its eggshell and swims between us
green beneath the clouds. The sky of color adorns her
and bewitches us, she the blue the green, born out of her legend,
out of the sacrificial feast of her wheat. She teaches us the art of searching
for the myth of creation, a woman upon her water arcades,
a woman ruling the eulogies. Age doesn't blemish her face. A bull
doesn't carry her on his horns. She carries herself within herself and sleeps
in the lap of herself. She doesn't bid us farewell or greet strangers.
And doesn't remember the past. She has no past.
She's herself, to and for herself. She lives and we live
when she lives free and green. She didn't board a single train with us. Not a camel
or a plane. And didn't lose any of her offspring. Didn't move far from us and didn't
lose her minerals. She didn't lose her allure. She's the green upon her blue waters ...
So rise, Father, from among the temple ruins and write
your name on her ring as the forefathers had written their names.
Rise to love your beautiful wife, from her braids to her anklets.
Rise! The only olive in this land's olive is the shadow of the land,
so rise to praise it, to worship it, and tell the tale of forgetfulness:
The invaders have often passed through and changed you and changed the names
of the land, repaired their vehicles and shared the martyrs of the land,
the land that remained what it used to be, your woman and your mother.
So rise, Father, let singing bring you back
like anemones that adopt the land and sing her as a house for the sky.
... And why the poem, Father? Winter is winter.
I will sleep after you, after this fragile carnival where the blood blackens
on the statues of temples like wine ... where narcissus and water break the lovers
who break their jealousy, their rift, and the crystal of longing for longing.
And I am sad, Father, like a pigeon in a tower, removed from its flock.
I am sad, Father, so if you meet my grandfather bid him salaam.
Kiss his hands, for me and for the descendants of Baal and Anat.
And fill his jug with wine from the grapes of Galilee or Hebron, and tell him:
My woman refuses to be the frame of her image. She exits from my remains
like another phoenix. And if you meet me there, Father, also bid me salaam.
Forget that I overlooked your horses, forgive, so I may know my memories.
You had hidden your heart from me, Father, before my life sheltered me within
what I see of creatures that don't make me ... But now
your remote fatherhood pulls at my hands and at my scattering
by your shadow's window, pulls toward the adobe shadow that hangs in the poem ...
Birth is a riddle ... I asked you, Father: Were you born to die?
You have often set your life aside ... exhausted yourself ... promised
to live for tomorrow but never lived at all. What good is the poem?
It raises the ceiling of our caves and flies from our blood to the language of doves.
O master of shrouded trees over the shadow of lavender's shadow,
master of the stone whose blood your palms wrung out ... have you exited
the marble to return to it? Tell me why did you bring me here, Father ... why?
Is it so I can call out when I'm tired: O Father, my friend?
O friend! Which one of us died before the other ...
I?
Or my friend?
(Continues...)
Excerpted from If I Were Another by Mahmoud Darwish, Fady Joudah. Copyright © 2009 Mahmoud Darwish Estate. Excerpted by permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Contents
TITLE PAGE,COPYRIGHT NOTICE,
INTRODUCTION: Mahmoud Darwish's Lyric Epic,
I SEE WHAT I WANT (1990),
Rubaiyat,
Take Care of the Stags, Father,
Truce with the Mongols by the Holm Oak Forest,
A Music Sentence,
The Tragedy of Narcissus the Comedy of Silver,
The Hoopoe,
ELEVEN PLANETS (1992),
Eleven Planets at the End of the Andalusian Scene,
I. On the last evening on this earth,
II. How do I write above the clouds?,
III. I have behind the sky a sky,
IV. And I am one of the kings of the end,
V. One day, I will sit on the sidewalk,
VI. Truth has two faces and the snow is black,
VII. Who am I after the stranger's night?,
VIII. Water, be a string to my guitar,
IX. In exodus I love you more,
X. I want from love only the beginning,
XI. The violins,
The "Red Indian's" Penultimate Speech to the White Man,
A Canaanite Rock in the Dead Sea,
We Will Choose Sophocles,
Rita's Winter,
A Horse for the Stranger,
MURAL (2000),
EXILE (2005),
I. Tuesday and the Weather Is Clear,
II. Dense Fog over the Bridge,
III. Like a Hand Tattoo in the Jahili Poet's Ode,
IV. Counterpoint,
NOTES,
GLOSSARY,
ALSO BY MAHMOUD DARWISH,
ABOUT THE AUTHORS,
COPYRIGHT,