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Posted by Mahmoud DARWISH on October 28, 19102 at 07:45:23:
In Reply to: Re: Einstein posted by info center/recommended SITEs list/-last updated on October 27, 19101 at 07:27:11:
Protest poetry / identity card
Mahmoud DARWISH
Intifada_culture@workers.org
"Identity Card" (Bitaqat Haweeya)
**
RECORD!!
I am an Arab
and my identity card is number fifty
thousand
I have eight children
and the nineth
is coming in midsummer
Will you be angry?
Record!
I am an Arab
employed with fellow workers
at a quarry
I have eight children
to get them bread
garments
and books
from the rocks-
I do not supplicate
charity
at your doors
Nor do I belittle myself
at the footsteps of your chamber
So will you be angry?
RECORD!!
I am an Arab
without a name- without title
in a patient country
with people enraged
My roots-
were entrenched before the birth of time
and before the opening of the eras
before the olive trees, athe
pines, and gr
My father-
descends from the family of the plow
not from a privileged cl
And my grandfather-
was a farmer
neither well-bred, nor well-born
And my house-
is like a watchman's hut
made of branches and cane
This is my status
Does it satisfy you?
I have a name but no title.
RECORD!!
I am an Arab
The color of my hair-is black
The color of my eyes-is brown
And my distinctive features:
The head-dress hatta wi'gal
And the hand is solid like a rock
My favorite meal
is olive oil and thyme {zatar}
ANd my address:
A village-isolated and deserted
where the streets have no names
and the men-work in the fields and quarries
THey like socialism
Will you be angry?
RECORD!!!
I am an Arab
You have stolen the orchards
of my ancestors
and the land
which I cultivated
Along with my children
And you left us with those rocks
so will the State take them
as it has been said?
Therefore!
Record on the top of the first page:
I do not hate man
Nor do I encroach
But if I become hungry
The usurper's flesh will be my food
Beware-beware- of my hunger
and my anger!!
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Protest poetry / Long lost land
Khadijah Al-Zeer
Intifada_culture@workers.org
Long Lost Land
London 9 April 1994
**
To tread on a Palestinean street
That once was peaceful, once discreet
But now you'll see the scurrying feet
Of hopless children with nothing to eat.
To see them running and risking their lives
and one out of four who ever survives.
Broken down buildings that once used to stand
Sidewalks and gardens that once were garnd.
A young mother is carrying her dying child
she gives him love that's soothing and kind
Little young children trying to cope
defenceless, unarmed, they have no hope.
Beside the ruins the youngsters play
but sooner or later they're frightened away
Starvation and poverty are all you can see
and to burnt down s civilians flee.
"Safe as home" people had said
now homes hold only the dying and dead.
Innocent prisoners are locked away
and graveyards are places where loved ones lay.
Students studying out on the gr
start fleeing away as the soldiers p
after a while they will retreat
but their education is never complete.
A boy of fifteen picks up a stone
and faces an army on his own
a pleading child, a poor civilian,
the young and the old all killed by the million.
But will there be an equal law?
Will we see the end of war?
Will the rightful owners stand
to reown and rule their long lost land?
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Protest poetry / Intifada
Najwa Farah
Intifada_culture@workers.org
Intifada
**
One poet got it right -
Addressing his beloved,
spoke about a bird that shivers
On a bough when dew wets its feathers.
That's like the love of maddened Qays to Leila.
Did such a shiver of pion
Spur the children of Palestine
To rise, pick up a stone, which transformed, becomes
A symbol of the land?
Children of pion,
Holding the land, are doomed to fall
By the deadly weapons of foreign troops,
And embrace the land forever.
But the birds will still sing and shiver
When dew falls on wing and feather,
And the babes who will grow older
Will grasp the language hidden
And translate it into deeds.
And the spring will lushly spring,
And the birds will chirp and sing,
And the boughs will dance and sway
For the love of those who died,
For the love that rent their heart.
(The Colour of Courage, A Christians Aware Publication, Creeds the Printers,
Broadoak, UK)
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Protest poetry / Children bearing rocks
Nizar Qabbani
Intifada_culture@workers.org
Children Bearing Rocks
**
With stones in their hands,
they defy the world
and come to us like good tidings.
They burst with anger and love, and they fall
while we remain a herd of polar bears:
a body armored against weather.
Like mussels we sit in cafes,
one hunts for a business venture
one for another billion
and a fourth wife
and s polished by civilization.
One stalks London for a lofty mansion
one traffics in arms
one seeks revenge in nightclubs
one plots for a throne, a private army,
and princedom.
Ah, generation of betrayal,
of surrogate and indecent men,
generations of leftovers,
we'll be swept away--
never mind the slow pace of history--
by the children bearing rocks.
In my shoes
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Protest poetry / those who p between fleeting words
Mahmoud DARWISH
Intifada_culture@workers.org
Those who p between fleeting words
(Abiroon Fi Kalamin Abir)
**
O those who p between fleeting words
Carry your names, and be gone
Rid our time of your hours, and be gone
Steal what you will from the blueness of the
sea and the sand of memory
Take what pictures you will, so that you understand
That which you never will:
How a stone from our land builds the ceiling of our sky.
O those who p between fleeting words
From you the sword -- from us the blood
From you steel and fire -- from us our flesh
From you yet another tank -- from us stones
From you tear gas -- from us rain
Above us, as above you, are sky and air
So take your share of our blood -- and be gone
Go to a dancing party -- and be gone
As for us, we have to water the martyrs' flowers
As for us, we have to live as we see fit.
O those who p between fleeting words
As better dust, go where you wish, but
Do not p between us like flying insects
For we have work to do in our land:
We have wheat to grow which we water with our bodies' dew
We have that which does not please you here:
Stones or partridges
So take the past, if you wish, to the antiquities market
And return the skeleton to the hoopoe, if you wish,
On a clay platter
We have that which does not please you: we have the future
And we have things to do in our land.
O those who p between fleeting words
Pile your illusions in a deserted pit, and be gone
Return the hand of time to the law of the golden calf
Or to the time of the revolver's music!
For we have that which does not please you here, so be gone
And we have what you lack: a bleeding homeland
of a bleeding people
A homeland fit for oblivion or memory
O those who p between fleeting words
It is time for you to be gone
Live wherever you like, but do not live among us
It is time for you to be gone
Die wherever you like, but do not die among us
For we have work to do in our land
We have the past here
We have the first cry of life
We have the present, the present and the future
We have this world here, and the hereafter
So leave our country
Our land, our sea
Our wheat, our salt, our wounds
Everything, and leave
The memories of memory
O those who p between fleeting words!
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Protest poetry / A million suns
Tawfiq Zeyad
Intifada_culture@workers.org
A Million Suns in my Blood
**
They stripped me of water and oil
And the salt of bread
The shining sun, the warm sea
The taste of knowledge
And a loved one who--twenty years ago--went off
Whom I wish (if only for an instant) to embrace.
They stripped me of everything
The threshold of my home
The flowerpots on the balcony.
They stripped me of everything
Except
A heart
A conscience
And a tongue!
In their chains, my pride
Is fiercer than all arrogant delirium.
In my blood a million suns
Defy a multitude of cruelties.
My love for you
You people of boundless tragedy
Lets me storm the seven heavens
For I am your son...
Your offspring
In heart
Conscience
And tongue!
Our hands are steady and enduring.
The hands of the oppressor
However hard
Tremble!
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Protest poetry / When revolutions degenerate
Nizar Qabani
Intifada_culture@workers.org
When Revolutions Degenerate!!
Translated by: Fahmi Abboushi
**
The most abhorrent event in the Arab world nowadays is the phenomenon of
degeneration;
degeneration in our bodies,
degeneration in our souls,
degeneration in our minds and our sense of time beats,
degeneration in our dreams and hopes,
degeneration in our national aspirations,
degeneration in our political practices,
degeneration in our language, our poetry, our prose and our cultural vision,
degeneration in our beliefs, our principles and our revolutionary slogans.
It is a horrifying chain of degenerations,
swiftly soaked us into the age of senility.
and with a simple comparison,
between our national maturity and the beautiful characteristics of the fifties,
and our degeneration, paleness, and the arching of our spine in the nineties,
we discover that aging is penetrating our bones, and that we have grown three
thousand years in thirty years.
The Arabic path has degenerated and is struck by partial paralysis;
after being able to engrave with its nails the flesh of the impossible,
and jump the walls of the stars...
And the Arab mes, who shared in inscribing history,
have entered the age of illiteracy;
nothing remains but a few rabbits seeking bits of carrots
to bite,
or a hole to enter.
The physical degeneration may be considered half the disaster,
if measured by the degeneration of the soul.
The soul degeneration means first of all:
the human's loss of desire for life;
the dreamer's loss of the ability to dream;
the mind's loss of the ability to create and prosper;
the feet's loss of energy to continue the march;
secondly, it means;
the horses resign from their neighing;
and the armed resign their arms;
the angry resign their anger;
and the messengers resign from preaching their messages;
and thirdly it means:
shame is stripped of its clothes;
and principles stripped of their axioms;
And Arabs stripped of their Arabness;
and the politicians stripped from their last membrane of ity;
and fourthly it means:
our eyes become in the back of our heads;
so that we only see our own faces in the mirror;
and read no books but our own;
and do not listen but to our rhetorical radios;
and see nothing in the geographical directions but the reverse;
and degeneration lastly means:
to give up our freedom,
for the sake of a meal, or an Omega watch;
or a in the ministry of culture,
or for a hundred dollar bill.
Since the defeat of June 1967,
the count down of the Arabic national project began;
and then came the second Gulf War to abort the rest of that project;
the word of unity became a work of Satan;
and a source of terror for Arabs in general and for the Gulfians in particular;
and there the happy Yemen;
cutting the last threads of unity between its north and south,
inspired by the lesson of separation between the Egyptian and Syrian in 1961.
I imagine that the virus of separation attacked all the national immune-organs;
and the Arab nationalists, ideologists, and Arab leftests intellectuals are
dodging the use of words such as "unity" or "unification";
so curses will not follow them,
and shame scar them.
Who expected that the unionists will retreat from their call of unity;
and the separatist, regionalist, religious and tribal thought will replace it
and raise their flag all over the Arab world?
Who expected to repent on our unification sins, and go back to out tribal
ideology? Returning to Dahis and Alghabra'e wars.
Do Dahis and Alghabra'e have ideology?
Yes. It is the idealogy of hatred, slander, invasion, attack, an ideology that
still compose a main part of our war and media campaigns strategies.
It is a series of satanic denigration,retreats, and defeats,
with no equal since the defeat of Grenada in 1492, and our exodus from
Andalusia,
And we found relatives to house us in Grand Morocco,
who opened their houses for us, and shared their loaf of bread with us, to save
us from asking alms,
who may rescue us from our diaspora these days?
If Abu-Abdalla, the last of the lords of Grenada, found a mule to take him
and his Harem to his new abode of exile in Morocco, how many mules do we need
to transfer the millions of Arabs who ran away from the Arabic wars, and the
Arab dictatorships, to their new diaspora...
We have no place in the land of Christians...
we have no place in the land of Muslims...
nor in the land of the Jews...
and the land of Buddhists.
We have no place in an Arab world that placed on its borders thousands of
barrels, hurdles and sand bags.
So that we do not share with it the piece of bread...
or disturb it by the noise of our sick and hungry children...
Nothing new on the Eastern front,
nor on the Western front,
not in the north,
nor in the south.
All our fronts are closed...and sealed with red wax,
and our rifles turned to kids' toys...
and our heroes turned to paper tigers,
and our slogans turned to spaghetti dishes...
and Fairuz's song "We shall return" is no more an Arabic song...
which became a Norwegian song!!
When the revolution chews American gum,
and wears American jeans,
then mourn it with eulogies...
And the peace negotiations with Israel...
these also degenerated...
we sit on chairs looking decrepit,
speaking a language that is corrupt,
dictating conditions that are degrading,
signing the minutes of the meeting in a state between waking and disillusion.
And when we are asked to stand in front of the microphone,
to lay the egg of the roaster,
we perspire, chill, fiery, and grumble,
and then we speak in broken English,
and utter with an indignant broken Arabic.
Who can stop these grand downfalls in our history?
Who can stop the death that daily emanates from our coffee cups?
And out of our papers headlines?
Who can take our homeland out of the dead freezer and slap it on its face,
once or twice, till it awakes from its state of unconsciousness,
and returns to its lively beat, anger and pride.
In the nineties,
the Arab world became a huge freezer absorbing 200 million Arab,
they are thinking under the zero level,
reading under the zero level,
writing under the zero level,
and dying under the zero level!
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Protest poetry / Jerusalem city of peace
Nidal Kersh
Intifada_culture@workers.org
Jerusalem city of peace
"Ya madinat alsalam" Fairuz
**
Oh you city of love
We pray for you
You most graceful among cities
Oh you city of pray
We pray for you
We imagine you everyday
How we used to walk there
Walk among the old churches
And pray together at the temple mount
Not a day goes by
Without Jerusalem on our mind
we pray
And in the stable
Lays Mary and her son
They are both crying
Crying for the children
For the children that were martyred
Oh you murdered peace
In the city of peace
And in the hearts over the world
Love declined
And in the stable
Lays Mary and her son
Their faces shed with tears
We pray for them all
We will leave the sorrow behind us
The anger of the people will rise
And I am full of faith
From everywhere we will come
to free you
from everywhere
we will free you
Even heaven will turn its wrath upon you
The hate which you brought
Will be washed away from the streets with rocks
You cannot close the gate of Jerusalem
I am going there to pray!
I will swim in river Jordan!
I will pray in the temple mount!
The land is ours!
Jerusalem is ours!
In our hearts you live forever!
In our hands you will have peace forever!
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Protest poetry / Do you remember?
Nidal Kersh
Intifada_culture@workers.org
Do you remember?
**
Do you remember?
How you stole my rights and d my land?
Do you remember?
How you murdered my mother, father and son?
How you stole my home and replaced it with your own?
Cant you see the tears that are shed?
The tears we shed is because we love our land
The land you came and d
Tears to all the ones you killed
To all villages you destroyed and claimed they were yours
You let the sons of s in to our promised land
And this promise I give you, you son of a
Nor day, nor night will the people rest
They will fight
Do you remember?
When we let you in to Jerusalem?
Do you remember?
How you stole our land?
We will not forget the hate and sorrow
that you brought to us
Can not you here the cries?
The cries which cry out the hate for you?
Fifty years has been, and you might think we will give up
Then think again you rapist of our land
As long as we live we will stand
We will fight you with rocks and bare hands
We will never forget the land we had
So remember!
Our struggle will not stop, nor day nor night
With love for our country we will fight
***
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