Iqbal Tamimi – for Mahmoud Darwish who left before my dream came true
By Iqbal Tamimi • Aug 11th, 2008 at 9:44 • Category: Culture and Heritage, Features, Music, Poetry, Events, Newswire, Palestine, Somoud: Arab Voices of Resistance, Uprooted Palestinians' Testimonies
Leave your sin on my palm before you go
We came from the same tribe of drifters
I left my head behind
Dangling in the well
Swinging with the horsing doors
Can you …please!
Leave on my palm your sin before you go
Or send me
An embarrassed tune
Written with your silent eyes
That we have made a hole
In that ugly apartheid wall
And that I have left behind a poem
Sunbathing with your olive trees in the dunes
And that we
Have paved the way
For armies of wise shoes
Because the feet colluded with heads
Did not know how to choose
And that I…
Have fallen between the letters
Got stuck between two commas
Because I was the shepherd of my wild dream
I was only declaring my fears to strangers
Rebelling against the snow
Shivering whenever I read a map
That does not lead home
Or whenever a nation of ignorance
Called my country by a pseudonom
Last night
I saw love sneaking from the crack of my dream
Rarely do I commit such follies
So.. if you don't mind..
please
Leave your algaes on my shirt
It might just bloom some peace
Iqbal Tamimi is a Palestinian journalist and poet from Hebron. She is the creator of a vibrant and important activists' network Palestinian Mothers, open to all who share the vision of peace and justice, men and women alike. She is working now in UK.
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May he rest in peace!
For Mahmoud Darwish: thank you for your searingly beautiful poem, a perfect tribute to a man to whom it is hard to do sufficient justice. You have done so. Darwish, the soaring skylark, singing the hope, pain, injustice of the Palestinian people, incomparably. A brighter star will look down on Palestine tonight.
Warm wishes.