Palestinian Poetry

The Butterfly’s Burden by Mahmoud Darwish

Pic of my copy next to one of my bookshelves, Iliad and Odyssey happen to be right behind it, in the middle of the shelf :D — these things happen. And the turtle is from Turunch, small town in Turkey, near Marmaris. Went on holiday there in 2001 with mu mum and brothers. My brothers got me that. Small, wooden box from Mostar, Bosnia in the middle of the lower shelf. Got that from a man I like to remember. And next to it an article about how stress is the cause of most of our health problems. Read into that what you will. I took the book, from the shelf, took a quick photo and this is what I got.

My book club with Merton PSC decided to read some poetry written by a Palestinian. There were so many suggestions. It was tough to pick a book, but we had a poll and this one won.

I’m not going to lie, I found this hard to understand. I was really pleased that other people were also reading it, and that we were meeting to talk about it.

We started the meeting by noticing some themes that repeat throughout:

- Exile and longing for homeland

- Waiting, even when you don’t want to

- Freedom, or lack of freedom, yet constantly roads, and walls

- Use of many myths and stories

- Secularism; though God and religion are mentioned, it’s never in terms of prayer

- Gazelle — we looked up the symbolism: beauty, longing, freedom, elegance

There were few others that we just mentioned in passing like flute, Phoenix, as well as Troy, etc… The author has lived in many places around the world. We could say he was well travelled. This shows in his poetry. And it seems he had equal respect for all traditions and cultures, combining them to express his suffering and hope.

Reading the poems out loud made a world of difference. Somehow they made more sense when I was listening to them. The thought of organising a poetry reading event crossed my mind.

We turned our attention to the longest poem in the book ‘A State of Siege’.

“…we do what the prisoners do,

And what the unemployed do:

We nurture hope”

So from the beginning this poem had us deep in thought. These lines were clear and very easy to relate to.

“A country on the verge of dawn,

We have become less intelligent,

Because we stare into victory’s hour:

No night in our artillery-glistened night

Our enemies are sleepless,

And our enemies ignite the light for us

In the blackness of shelters

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