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from the article:

This film is about Damascus, an 11,000 years old city, the most ancient & precious of cities, set to the poetry of the world famous Palestinian poet / author Mahmoud Darwish.

More than three years have passed since the idea inception up to this moment. This project was my companion during my staying abroad, it was like a friend and an enemy at the same time, sometimes I spend hours working on it, and sometimes I leave it for months. Now after two months of heavy work, I’ve finished it, and I would like to present it to you … I hope you like it.

from the article: Translated from the Spanish by Janet N. Gold

Homeless

I come, I go. And then I think. That it’s all the same here or there. There is no place gained. That here, like there. I am what people call a “stranger.” And like a stranger I will come and go. Until here like there. Neither I nor anyone will be.

The Presence Denied

I always felt sorry for he who did not know how to love me… I was born to distant stars alone at dawn… My wings are useless on earth’s shores. You are a small man and cannot reach my flight.

from the article:

Untitled excerpt from Quechuan Lilies

Little rainstorm, little rainstorm ********please, do not rain down on me, that my shawl is short.

Hailstorm, hailstorm ********do not hail down on me, that my shawl is small.

Diversion, diversion, divert. ********Even upon thorns I would walk, Even stones I would break under bare foot.

Ay, ayayái, ayayái! ********Little shepherdess: ********going up the little hill as the condor circles and circles.

Ay, ayayái, ayayái! ********Little shepherd ********climbing the little mountain as the hawk flutters and flutters.

Ay, ayayái, ayayái! ********Shepherds ********Standing atop the courtyard wall, as the fox sniffs and sniffs.

Let us go, yes or no: Into the river, to catch fish.

Let us go, yes or no: to the shore to stone some ducks.

from the article:

Blasón

I am, endemic and untamed, the singer of America my lyre has a spirit, my song an idea. My verse does not swing from branches with the slow sway of a tropical hammock…

When I feel Inca, I pay homage to the Sun, who in my hands places the royal center of his power; when I feel Hispanic and recall the colonizing, my stanzas are glass trumpets.

All my fancy from my Moorish mothers, and my Moorish fathers, the Andes are made of silver, but the León is made of gold, and I melt them both, with cacophonous clamor.

Spanish the blood, and Incan the pulse; and were I not poet, perhaps then a white adventurer or Indian emperor.

from the article:

Children of Wars

We’re the children of wars that ate our languages and bequeathed us the language of blankness.

The last flame in her lamp the last sorrowful moans flowing from the edges in the map of this crying

we were uprooted until our hearts were torn apart like shredded cloud and suns multiplied from our skin from our bare feet on the pavement.

We’re the children of wars raised without respite grown old with the sorrow of a thousand years we’re no prophets nor legends nor Gods we’re the ones hanging on the slogans’ cross.

We’re the children of wars that ate our languages and gave us for a roof over our heads or any home only hunger.

We’re the children of wars that ate our languages and bequeathed us the bitterness of death in batches.

We’re the children of wars and its last guardians the last gravestones at its gates.

We wipe the tears of angels and sing all the forgotten songs to the tender anemone by the sea.

The Color of Blossom

We pray the color of the blossom sprouts the dream in us to cross the narrow darkness and hang our clothes on the sun to dry from all the tears of war and run with the memory of a child who forgives the country and plays barefoot next to the rubble

from the article:

I abandoned all desire—the pain of existence eased I ceased the arrogant fluttering of my wings my cage became an orchard full of flowers

The heat of my passion rendered this world a flat plain. The flood of my tears made the mountains and deserts into verdant valleys

Silence poured into my lap with the blare of a hundred eschatons. The breath I suppressed within my chest, gave root to a thousand reed beds

Wherever I looked, thoughts of the self waylaid me until—this branch clad in flowers pointed me towards the beloved’s door

O ascetic, why take such pride in your purified heart? Whatever turns into a clear mirror simply becomes a means for arrogance and ostentation

Love is the beginning of all sorrows. It pained my heart so today—the flood receded in despair finding my house already in ruins

If I rent my shirt out of my obsessive love, I will try to hold on to the hem of my beloved’s dress. O love – head towards the desert—see how the spring reveals itself there

Compelled by destiny—we act and speak in helplessness and humility. Our imagination longs for and soars towards what it cannot reach

I feel alive, electrified. Is it because I am about to lose my senses or is it the thought of seeing the beloved? Like the mustard seeds, the smoke rising from me betrays being burnt by a hidden fire

Baidel, once you retreated from worldly cares saved yourself from all its snares—the world became shrouded in shame—ashamed to show its guilty face

Translated from the Persian by Homa Mojadidi

from the article:

How to be a poet in wartime

What does it mean to be a poet in times of war? It means apologizing … extensively apologizing to the burnt trees to the nestless birds to the crushed homes to the long cracks along the streets to the pale faced children before and after death to the faces of every sad or murdered mother

What does it mean to be safe in times of war? It means being ashamed … of your smile of having warmth of your clean clothes of your idle hours of your yawning of your cup of coffee of your restful sleep of having alive loved ones of having a full stomach of having available water of having clean water of being able to shower And for incidentally being alive!

Oh God, I don't want to be poet in times of war

from the article:

hex poem to colonizers, recolonizers, and haters

i hope you feel the sting of platano poppin’ oil

i hope when you try to jump back, one drop jumps a second quicker onto your hand

and i hope when you bite into it, thinking the sting was worth it, you realize you didn’t let the platano ripen enough and it ain’t even that sweet

just like you.

from the article:

“There will be no end to my flowers”

There will be no end to my flowers, nor a ceasing to my song. I, singer, in singing lift, while they split and spread. Even after they have wilted and yellowed, they will be taken in, carried into the house of the gold-plumed bird.

from the article:

¡Eheu!

Here, beside the Latin sea I tell the truth: I feel in stone, oil, and wine I, my ancientness Oh, what an old man am I, holy God! Oh, what an old man am I! From whence my song? And I, where do I go?

That knowing myself begins to cost me Do many moments of abyss And the how and the when…

And this Latin clarity what good did it do me, at the doorstep of the mine of the I and the not I…?

Happy dreamer, I believe myself interpreter of the secrets of the wind, the earth and the sea…

A few vague secrets of the being and the not being, and fragments of consciousness of now and yesterday.

How in the midst of a desert did I begin to cry out; and I watched the sun as if dead and lay down to cry.

from the article:

And all that remains for me is to follow a violet darkness on soil where myths splinter and crack. Yes, love was time, and it too splintered and cracked like the face of our country.

My share of the people is the transit of their ghosts.

from the article:

Bird

It settles on the branch and the branch knows not if it is wind or bird’s leg that graces it.

It flies and the wind knows not if it is branch or wounded wing in flight.

It falls and there is neither branch nor wind to stop its painful encounter with the earth.

Afternoon’s Vertigo

I

And that sphere of fire, how is it that it reduces us to its eternal arriving and then hiding?

This condition of observers of an Everything, powerless to ascend to its millennial fire, conceives within me the virtue of a river bird, of the desire of all the flights of my flesh.

II

I extinguish myself. I light up again. It is the spell of the wind upon the long branches of the evening.

A bat adorns the nostalgia of the tropics soon after the tolling of the bells.

But it is not enough. I do not get lost in the music, in the voices, in the rivers of words. I do not forget the night…arriving now.

III

Now I close my eyes, I have my body and I turn into the fruit of waiting.