Tuesday, July 31, 2007
To the One Who Will Fly
Saturday, July 07, 2007
“The Fiddler Said”
“The Fiddler Said” from A Lover from Palestine (1966)
This way
the trees grow
melted are the pebble
gradually
by the river’s ripple.
The fiddler,
on the road to the city,
plays an enchanting, twilit tune
He said to the wind
tediously
“Destroy me
as long as you’re my life
as claimed by destiny –
Drink me
a toast of the ashes’ victory
This way
The rain falls
O lips of the curs’d city!”
They took those who hear him
away
and the drunken, too
They bound him
Threw him in the detention room
They calls names
his mother, his father’s mother
The fiddler
chanted the lyrics of the autumn’s sun
He heals the wound
.. by the lyre!
The fiddler’s on cross of pain
His sore’s bright like a star
He said to the people round him:
Anything ... but lament:
This way
I died standstill
Standstill died I like trees!
Thus the Cross becomes
an alter.. or a rod of a tune
and its stigmata a lyre!
This way
The rain falls
The trees grow.
by: Mahmoud Darwish
Translated by: Aladdin Mahmoud
This way
the trees grow
melted are the pebble
gradually
by the river’s ripple.
The fiddler,
on the road to the city,
plays an enchanting, twilit tune
He said to the wind
tediously
“Destroy me
as long as you’re my life
as claimed by destiny –
Drink me
a toast of the ashes’ victory
This way
The rain falls
O lips of the curs’d city!”
They took those who hear him
away
and the drunken, too
They bound him
Threw him in the detention room
They calls names
his mother, his father’s mother
The fiddler
chanted the lyrics of the autumn’s sun
He heals the wound
.. by the lyre!
The fiddler’s on cross of pain
His sore’s bright like a star
He said to the people round him:
Anything ... but lament:
This way
I died standstill
Standstill died I like trees!
Thus the Cross becomes
an alter.. or a rod of a tune
and its stigmata a lyre!
This way
The rain falls
The trees grow.
by: Mahmoud Darwish
Translated by: Aladdin Mahmoud
Labels: Arabic Literature in translation, Mahmoud Darwish, Poetry
