Mahmoud Darwish

Mahmoud Darwish died during the previous night and another Palestinian voice dies out, yet Darwish was not just a "national poet" for the Palestinians but truly a poet's poet, a poet unique and so familiar, whose voice hopefully will continue to inspire and attract people to a certain kind of poetry which falls outside the mainstream and is also sometimes called the poetry of resistance.

Darwish's poems are now widely read in some quarters with good and sometimes really good translations and at numerous sites on the Internet you can hear him read his poems in a sonorous and majestic tone. Many of his poems have been sung by the Lebanese singer Marcel Khalife including the famous Rita and the Rifle, passport and Mother. A link here to a few poems of Darwish that I have copied on this blog in the past.

Darwish wrote that.........

"I will dream
A poem cannot change a passing, yet still present-past,
nor prevent an earthquake.
But I will dream........."

With Darwish's death, a certain kind of a voice has died much like Said before him, and the Palestinians are the poorer with this loss. Yet as he wrote....

"Vanity, vanity of vanities........vanity!
All that lives on earth is bound to pass.
I lived as never a poet has. A king and a sage.
...............................................................................
Is this why the more I know, the louder I lament?
What use is Jerusalem?
What use is the throne to me?"