Month: December 2024

In Australia our federal government created a ‘special envoy to combat antisemitism’ as its response to those who could be upset by this criminal slaughter. Do you have to be antisemitic to be angered by the sight of ‘soldiers’ slaughtering children and enjoying it?

Below another poem written by what Israel describes as a “human animal.”

Australia can do better.

I See My Ghost Coming From Afar
by Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish
from "Why Have You Left The Horse Alone"
trans. Joanna Bell from the Arabic text fourth edition Riad El-Rayyes Books, January 2009

I look out, like the balcony of a house,
on whatever I want
I look out on my friends carrying the evening news:
wine and bread, some novels and parcels…
I look out on a gull, and on the soldiers’ trucks
that changed the trees of this place.
I look out on my emigrant neighbor’s dog
from Canada, since a year and a half ago…
I look out on the name “Abi Al-Tayyeb Al-Mutanabbi”,
the Traveler from Tiberias to Egypt
on a horse that was an ode
I look out on the Persian flower climbing
over the iron fence
I look out, like the balcony of a house,
on whatever I want
*
I look out on a tree guarding the night from itself
and guarding the sleep of those who want me dead…
I look out on the wind looking for the homeland of the
wind within itself…
I look out on a woman basking within herself…
I look out on a procession of the prophets of old
ascending barefoot to Jerusalem
and I ask: Is there any new prophet
for this new time?
*
I look out, like the balcony of a house, on whatever I
want
I look out on my image and it flees from itself
to a stone peace, and it carries my mother’s handkerchief
that gets lost in the wind: What would happen if I went
back to being a child again? And I went back to you… and
you came back to me
I look out on a branch of an olive tree that hid Zachariah
I look out on words that went extinct in the Arab
dictionary
I look out on the Fars, the Romans, and the Sumerians,
and the new refugees…
I look out on the neck of one of Tagore’s poor
being crushed by the wheels of the handsome prince…
I look out on the hoopoe migrating away from the king’s
reproach
What will happen… what will happen after the ash?
I look out on my body fearful from afar…
I look out, like the balcony of a house,
on whatever I want
*
I look out on my words after two days. A small opening
suffices for Aeschylus to open the door to peace,
a short speech suffices for Antony to ignite war,
a woman’s hand in mine suffices
for me to embrace my freedom
and to begin the ebb and tide in my body anew
*
I look out, like the balcony of a house,
on whatever I want
I look out on my ghost
coming
from
afar…