Mahmoud Darwish

If only I were a stone

I would yearn for nothing

no yesterday passing, no tomorrow to come and my present neither advancing nor retreating Nothing happening to me!

If only I were a stone - I said -Oh if only I were some stone so that water would burnish me green, yellow - I would be placed in a room like a sculpture, or exercises in sculpture or material for the eruption of the necessary from the folly of the unnecessary If only I were a stone

so that I could yearn for something!

In every object there is a being in pain - a memory of fingers, of a smell, an image. And houses are killed just like their inhabitants.

And the memory of objects is killed: stone, wood, glass, iron, cement are scattered in broken fragments like living beings. And cotton, silk, linen, papers, books are torn to pieces like proscribed words. Plates, spoons, toys, records, taps, pipes, door handles, fridges, washing machines, flower vases, jars of olives and pickles, tinned food all break just like their owners. Salt, sugar, spices, boxes of matches, pills, contraceptives, antidepressants, strings of garlic, onions, tomatoes, dried okra, rice and lentils are crushed to pieces just like their owners.

If your eyes hadn't been aimed at my heart the bullet would have penetrated it!' Or: 'If I hadn't been so eager to avoid being killed, I wouldn't have killed anyone!'

If your eyes hadn't been aimed at my heart the bullet would have penetrated it!' Or: 'If I hadn't been so eager to avoid being killed, I wouldn't have killed anyone!' Or: 'I was afraid for you if I died, so I survived to put your mind at rest.' Or: 'Heroism is a word we only use at the graveside.' Or: 'In battle I did not think of victory but of being safe, and of the freckles on your back.' Or: 'How little difference there is between safety and peace and the room where you sleep.' Or: ''When I was thirsty I asked my enemy for water and he didn't hear me, so I spoke your name and my thirst was quenched.'

I gaze at the yellow :flowers and feel they are lighting me up and dissolving my darkness, and I grow less heavy, finer, and we end up reflecting one another's translucence.

And the girl is saved for a while

because a hazy hand

a divine hand of some sort helps her, so she calls out: ‘Father

Father! Let’s go home, the sea is not for people like us!’

The echo has no echo

so she becomes the endless scream in the breaking news

which was no longer breaking news

when

the aircraft returned to bomb a house with two windows and a door.

And today is better than tomorrow. But the dead are what’s new. They’re born every day and when they’re trying to sleep death takes them away from their drowsiness into a sleep without dreams.

Voices search for words in the open country, and the echo comes back clearly, woundingly: ‘There’s nobody here.’