The Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish (d. 2008) was born in al-Birwa on this day in 1941. To commemorate his entrance into our world on March 13, ArabLit has 13 poems (and poemish texts):

1) “The Moon Did Not Fall Into the Well,” from Journal of an Ordinary Grief, tr. Ibrahim Muhawi

Muhawi’s translations have a wonderful sense of the rhythm of the original, and this particular text is narrative, open-hearted, and with deeply etched characters. It opens:

—What are you doing, father?

—I’m searching for my heart, which fell away that night.

—Do you think you’ll find it here?

—Where else am I going to nd it? I bend to the ground and pick it up piece by piece just as the women of the fellahin pick up olives in October, one olive at a time.

—But you’re picking up pebbles!

—Doing that is a good exercise for memory and perception. Who knows? Maybe these pebbles are petrified pieces of my heart.

2) “Love, like meaning,” from In the Presence of Absence, tr. Sinan Antoon.

Perhaps the greatest of Darwish’s works, this version brought Antoon the 2012 National Translation Award:

Love, like meaning, is out on the open road, but like poetry, it is difficult. It requires talent, endurance, and skillful formulation, because of its many stations. It is not enough to love, for that is one of nature’s magical acts, like rainfall and thunder. It takes you out of yourself into the other’s orbit and then you have to fend for yourself. It is not enough to love, you have to know how to love. Do you know how?

3) “The Dice Player,” from If I Were Another: Poems, tr. Fady Joudah

The charming “The Dice Player” with a visual adaptation:

4) “The Horse Fell off the Poem,” from The Butterfly’s Burden, tr. Fady Joudah

There is no margin in modern language left to celebrate what we love, because all that will be … was

5) “The Second Olive Tree,” tr. Marilyn Hacker

And with horses, olive trees:

The olive tree does not weep and does not laugh. The olive tree

Is the hillside’s modest lady. Shadow

Covers her one leg, and she will not take her leaves off in front of the storm.

Standing, she is seated, and seated, standing.

6) “Nothing But Iraq,” tr. Shareah Taleghani

A cry to Badr Shakir al-Sayyab:

I remember as-Sayyab screaming into the Gulf in vain:

Iraq, Iraq. Nothing but Iraq.

And nothing but an echo replies

I remember as-Sayyab, in that Sumerian space

A woman triumphed over the sterility of mist

She bequeathed to us earth and exile . . .

For poetry is born in Iraq,

So be Iraqi to become a poet, my friend.

7) “And where is my will?” from Memory for Forgetfulness, tr. Ibrahim Muhawi

And where is my will?

It stopped over there, on the other side of the collective voice. But now, I want nothing more than the aroma of coffee. Now I feel shame. I feel shamed by my fear, and by those defending the scent of the distant homeland–that fragrance they’ve never smelled because they weren’t born on her soil. She bore them, but they were born away from her. Yet they studied her constantly, without fatigue or boredom; and from overpowering memory and constant pursuit, they learned what it means to belong to her.

“You’re aliens here,” they say to them there.

“You’re aliens here,” they say to them here.

8) “Standing Before the Ruins of Al-Birweh,” tr. Sinan Antoon, from I Don’t Want This Poem to End

Like birds, I tread lightly on the earth’s skin

so as not to wake the dead

I shut the door to my emotions to become my other

I don’t feel that I am a stone sighing

as it longs for a cloud

9) “The Tragedy of Narcissus,” from If I Were Another, tr. Fady Joudah:

10) “A Noun Sentence,” , tr. Fady Joudah

A noun sentence, no verb

to it or in it: to the sea the scent of the bed

after making love … a salty perfume

or a sour one. A noun sentence: my wounded joy

like the sunset at your strange windows.

11) “If I Were a Hunter,” tr. Shakir Mustafa

If a hunter I were

I’d give the gazelle

a chance, and another,

and a third, and a tenth,

to doze a little. My share

of the booty would be

peace of mind under

her dozing head.

12) “Diary,” tr. Tania Tamari Nasir and John Berger.

If you were told: you’re going to die here this evening What would you do in the remaining time? Look at my watch Drink a glass of juice Munch an apple Watch an ant who has found what to eat Then look at my watch There’s still time to shave have a bath I say to myself: One needs one’s finery when about to write So I’ll wear the blue shirt I sit til noon alive at my desk I do not see the effect of color on words Whiteness whiteness whiteness I prepare my last lunch I pour out wine into two glasses For me and for the one who will come Unannounced Then I take a siesta in between two dreams

13) “ID Card,” tr. Salman Masalha and Vivian Eden

This would not likely be a poem Darwish would choose among only 13 of his works. But it is one that, although written in his early days, in 1964, continues to have great political resonance:

Write it down! I’m an Arab

My card number is 50000

My children number eight

And after this summer, a ninth on his way.

Does this make you rage?

I am an Arab.