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Mahmoud Darwish

A River Dies of Thirst

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  • Rafael Narvalhas quoted12 days ago
    A river was here
    and it had two banks
    and a heavenly mother who nursed it on drops from the clouds
    A small river moving slowly
    descending from the mountain peaks
    visiting villages and tents like a charming lively guest
    bringing oleander trees and date palms to the valley
    and laughing to the nocturnal revellers on its banks:
    ‘Drink the milk of the clouds
    and water the horses
    and fly to Jerusalem and Damascus’
    Sometimes it sang heroically
    at others passionately
    It was a river with two banks
    and a heavenly mother who nursed it on drops from the clouds
    But they kidnapped its mother
    so it ran short of water
    and died, slowly, of thirst.
  • Rafael Narvalhas quoted14 days ago
    If we were to listen intently to the sound of silence, we would talk less.
  • Rafael Narvalhas quoted14 days ago
    Silence is a sound which has evaporated and disappeared in the wind and fragmented into echoes preserved in cosmic water jars.
  • Rafael Narvalhas quoted14 days ago
    someone has to be absent to lighten the burden of the place.
  • Rafael Narvalhas quoted18 days ago
    But the individual fighter is not a soldier in the presence of the one he loves
  • Rafael Narvalhas quoted4 months ago
    ‘I know they’re strong and can invade and kill anyone. But they can’t break or occupy my words.’
  • Rafael Narvalhas quoted4 months ago
    ‘If I write love poems, I resist the conditions that don’t allow me to write love poems.’
  • Rafael Narvalhas quoted4 months ago
    Poetry cannot afford ‘to lose its fundamentally self-delighting inventiveness, its joy in being a process of language as well as a representation of things in the world.’
  • Rafael Narvalhas quoted4 months ago
    ‘In the midst of what is going on now, it is hard, when you sit down at a desk, to feel that morning after morning spent fiddling with words and rhythms is a justified activity.’
  • Arooma Zehrahas quoted6 months ago
    I didn’t see Jews as devils or angels, but as human beings. I always humanise the other. I will continue to humanise the enemy. Poems take the side of love not war.
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