D is for Dazzling...and Delicate...and Darwish

Darwish, Mahmoud (1941-2008)

Mahmoud Darwish was a notable Palestinian poet and political activist, writing in Arabic. He was perceived as  the national poet for Palestine, and was a symbol of the Palestinian resistance, sometimes confused with being anti-Israel. Darwish himself however, always denied accusations of anti-Semitism. Whatever his political stand, the mastery of his language and the beauty of his poetry is undeniable. My response here is to two of his poems - The Cypress Broke and In Jerusalem.

Repeat again

I read them over and over again

from cover to cover. Each couplet

a poem by itself, with its own burden

of crises: identity, exile, now and then

the hairline differences that offset

exile, immigrant and expatriate.

I read them over and over again

as if by reading one more time

the sense will suddenly leap out clean

in one more reading what these mean -

this absence or presence of rhyme

stock-still and quivering at end of line.

I read them over, ceaseless repeats,

fierce wonder heightens the cadence

I taste the words with fingertips

the looping curves and uprights stiff

it’s a stranger turning and it’s no chance

that he wears my face, and all my silence.

And he is my face, and he is my friend

and he is my yearning to come to rest

just for once at some oxbow’s bend

in an ancient village for a second;

and he’s my hand, daubing lentil paste,

and he’s at once a broken cypress.

He murmurs something, the wind stirs, whips

up words; they lodge in the marrows of moons;

they lodge in the spaces of my ribs

thrum them like strings, time’s broken nibs

and bridges of sighs between inopportune,
fractured lands and trees, half-sung half-tunes.

D is for Dispossessed. Something about the exile and their yearning for return resonates Deeply with me. Because my grandfather's family went through the upheaval of an unplanned Departure from a centuries old homestead, never to return again. I grew up on that extra-intense Dollop of yearning and nostalgia. The collective ancestral experience of exile/homelessness/Dispossession inherited and the endless spin-offs. 

D is also for Diversity. I come from a Diverse country indeed - 29 states, 22 official languages, innumerable art forms, handicrafts, oral storytelling, poetry, music and performing arts traditions, both classical and folk.  Some of them preserved unbroken for three millennia.  India is the birthplace of 4 major world faiths, and has adherents of all religions - Hindus, Buddhists, Christians, Muslims, Jews, Jains, Sikhs, Zoroastrians, Bahais, every belief system one can think of.  India is a secular Democracy, for which I am Duly thankful.  Much of the MENA region, where I have lived for the past two decades, is still struggling to find a political system that suits the aspirations of their populations.

D is also for Different.  Tomorrow the Western world will observe Easter Sunday.  In Egypt, the Coptic Christians follow a Different calendar, the entire Eastern Orthodox Churches do, and thus the Eastern Orthodox Easter celebrations do not coincide with the Western one.  This year the Eastern Easter will be on 12^th April.  Do you celebrate Easter? On which Date? Happy Easter to you, if you do, and whenever you celebrate.

Posted for the A-Z Challenge 2015