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Far away, our dreams have nothing to do with what we do. The wind carries the night, and passes on, aimless.Mahmoud Darwish
2
Be my lover between two wars waged in the mirror, she said. I don't want to return now to the fortress of my father's house. Take me to your vineyard. Let me meet your mother. Perfume me with basil water. Arrange me on silver dishes, comb me, imprison me in your name, let love kill me.Mahmoud Darwish
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I love women whose hidden desires make horses put an end to their lives at the thresholdMahmoud Darwish
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I see what I want of Love... I see horses making the meadow dance, fifty guitars sighing, and a swarm of bees suckling the wild berries, and I close my eyes until I see our shadow behind this dispossessed place... I see what I want of people: their desire to long for anything, their lateness in getting to work and their hurry to return to their folk... and their need to say: Good Morning...Mahmoud Darwish
5
I see a bird carrying me and carrying you, with us as its wings, beyond the dream, to a journey that has no end and no beginning, no purpose and no goal. I do not speak to you, and you do not speak to me; we listen only to the music of silence. Silence is the friend's trust of friend, imagination's self-confidence between rain and rainbow. A rainbow is inspiration provoking the poet, uninvited, the infatuation of the poet with the prose of the Quran. Which of your Lord's blessings do you disown? We are absent, you and I; we are present, you and I. And absent. Which of your Lord's blessings do you disown?.Mahmoud Darwish
6
I have learned and dismantled all the words in order to draw from them asingle word: Home.Mahmoud Darwish
7
The mercy bullet I envy horses: if they break a leg and feel humiliated because they can no longer charge back and forth in the wind, they are cured by a mercy bullet. So if something in me gets broken, physically or spiritually, I would do well to look for a proficient killer, even if he is one of my enemies. I will pay him a fee and the price of the bullet, kiss his hand and his revolver, and if I am able to write, extol him in a poem of rare beauty, for which he can choose the metre and rhyme.Mahmoud Darwish
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Put it on record-- I am an ArabAnd the number of my card is fifty thousand I have eight children And the ninth is due after summer. What's there to be angry about? Put it on record.-- I am an ArabWorking with comrades of toil in a quarry. I have eight childern For them I wrest the loaf of bread, The clothes and exercise books From the rocks And beg for no alms at your doors, -- Lower not myself at your doorstep.-- What's there to be angry about? Put it on record.-- I am an Arab.I am a name without a tide, Patient in a country where everything Lives in a whirlpool of anger.-- My roots-- Took hold before the birth of time-- Before the burgeoning of the ages, -- Before cypess and olive trees, -- Before the proliferation of weeds. My father is from the family of the plough-- Not from highborn nobles. And my grandfather was a peasant-- Without line or genealogy. My house is a watchman's hut-- Made of sticks and reeds. Does my status satisfy you?-- I am a name without a surname. Put it on Record.--I am an Arab.Color of hair: jet black. Color of eyes: brown. My distinguishing features:-- On my head the 'iqal cords over a keffiyeh-- Scratching him who touches it. My address:-- I'm from a village, remote, forgotten, -- Its streets without name-- And all its men in the fields and quarry.-- What's there to be angry about? Put it on record.-- I am an Arab.You stole my forefathers' vineyards-- And land I used to till, -- I and all my childern, -- And you left us and all my grandchildren-- Nothing but these rocks.-- Will your government be taking them too-- As is being said? So! -- Put it on record at the top of page one:-- I don't hate people, -- I trespass on no one's property. And yet, if I were to become starved-- I shall eat the flesh of my usurper.-- Beware, beware of my starvation.-- And of my anger! .Mahmoud Darwish
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Have I had two roads, I would have chosen their third.Mahmoud Darwish
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In Damascus:poems become diaphanous They’re neither sensualnor intellectualthey are what echo saysto echo .. .Mahmoud Darwish
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History laughs at both the victim and the aggressor.Mahmoud Darwish
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Poetry and beauty are always making peace. When you read something beautiful you find coexistence it breaks walls down.Mahmoud Darwish
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Sarcasm helps me overcome the harshness of the reality we live, eases the pain of scars and makes people smile.Mahmoud Darwish
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I believe in the power of poetry, which gives me reasons to look ahead and identify a glint of light.Mahmoud Darwish
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I see poetry as spiritual medicine.Mahmoud Darwish
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Against barbarity, poetry can resist only by confirming its attachment to human fragility like a blade of grass growing on a wall while armies march by.Mahmoud Darwish