Poetry from Palestine ft. Mahmoud Darwish, Naomi Shihab Nye, & Fadwa Tuqan

#02 - When poetry is truth

Oct 17, 2023

Hi all,

This week, my heart and mind are in Gaza.

There is so much I could write here – I could write about the historical context of what’s happening and how I studied the Arab-Israeli conflict in college. I could write about the Palestinian mother I met in the West Bank, whose hands shook around her cup of mint tea as her husband recounted the story of their son, arrested for throwing a rock, then died of a seizure in an Israeli prison because he wasn’t given his medication. I could write about how being critical of Israel is not the same thing as anti-semiticism, and about the thousands of Jewish people around the world who feel their grief is being weaponized.

But these words would all be a distraction from the plain and painful reality: the world is watching, and allowing, genocide to happen.

This week, donations don’t feel like enough (and in fact, they aren’t since Israel is preventing aid from reaching Gaza). Social media posts and protests demanding a cease-fire don’t feel like enough. And so I turn to poetry, the last resort of hopelessness.

Reading poetry in the face of such violence can feel like a luxury. But through poems, we hear a person’s emotional truth. A truth that is often far simpler than any political or historical “truth.” Through poems, we feel. And by feeling, we relate.

I read this quote yesterday from Mohammed Moussa, founder of the Gaza Poets Society: “Growing up in Gaza is inspiring for anyone, but especially for poets – life here is poetry blown into pieces and scattered all over the place.”

By reading Palestinian poetry, we pick up pieces of their lives – the ones that have been scattered – and we honor them. I think this is the best we can do right now. Honor and share the experiences of the people who call this nightmare their life.

A photo of the Israeli Separation Wall or Apartheid Wall I took in the Aida Refugee Camp, outside of Bethlehem. This isn’t a picture of Gaza, but I think it speaks to the reality of Palestinian life for many as a life lived behind barriers.

So today, I’m sharing three poems from Palestinian poets Mahmoud Darwish, Naomi Shihab Nye, and Fadwa Touqan. And though there are many Jewish poets whose work I could share here as well, I’ve decided to share Palestinian poems since their voices are not as commonly elevated in the U.S.

I’ll add my interpretations but would love to hear yours in the comments, as always.

The Cypress Broke

Mahmoud Darwish

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The cypress is the tree’s grief and not
the tree, and it has no shadow because it is
the tree’s shadow
- Bassam Hajjar

The cypress broke like a minaret, and slept on
the road upon its chapped shadow, dark, green,
as it has always been. No one got hurt. The vehicles
sped over its branches. The dust blew
into the windshields ... / The cypress broke, but
the pigeon in a neighboring house didn’t change
its public nest. And two migrant birds hovered above
the hem of the place, and exchanged some symbols.
And a woman said to her neighbor: Say, did you see a storm?
She said: No, and no bulldozer either ... / And the cypress
broke. And those passing by the wreckage said:
Maybe it got bored with being neglected, or it grew old
with the days, it is long like a giraffe, and little
in meaning like a dust broom, and couldn’t shade two lovers.
And a boy said: I used to draw it perfectly,
its figure was easy to draw. And a girl said: The sky today
is incomplete because the cypress broke.
And a young man said: But the sky today is complete
because the cypress broke. And I said
to myself: Neither mystery nor clarity,
the cypress broke, and that is all
there is to it: the cypress broke!

Mahmoud Darwish is one of my favorite poets. Though there are many beautiful works of his I could feature here – like In Jerusalem, To Our Land, A Noun Sentence, and more – I selected “The Cypress Broke” because I think it speaks perfectly to the moment we’re in as a world right now.

Before the poem starts, we read a quote about how Cypress trees are “a tree’s grief” and “a tree’s shadow.” They are not, it seems, highly valued in this community. I can’t help but draw parallels to the anti-Arab racism of the West. How we seem to so easily turn a blind eye when Arab civilians are murdered, how we find ways to dehumanize them to justify our hate. Then we hear about a Cypress tree that broke. We hear people wonder what happened since there was no storm “and no bulldozer either.” We hear a girl and a young man speculate as to what the broken Cypress means for the sky. And through all of this, we get further from what actually happened. A Cypress tree broke.

I feel hopelessness and frustration reading this poem. Hopelessness because to the poet, it no longer matters why something happened or what it means. It happened – there is nothing to justify or explain it. Then there’s the frustration of seeing what happened and feeling like the search for explanations takes us further from the truth. It distracts us. Though it was written in 2007, I feel this poem could’ve been written today. Like the Cypress, Gaza is being broken. And many in government and the media would prefer to talk about why it’s happening than do anything to address it.

Moon Over Gaza

Naomi Shihab Nye

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I am lonely
for my friends.
They liked me,
trusted my coming.
I think they looked up at me
more than other people do.

I who have been staring down so long
see no reason for the sorrows humans make.
I dislike the scuffle and dust of bombs blasting
very much. It blocks my view.

A landscape of sorrow and grieving
feels different afterwards. 
Different sheen from a simple desert,
children who say my name
like a prayer.  

Sometimes I am bigger than
a golden plate,
a giant coin
and everyone gasps. 

Maybe it is wrong
that I am so calm.

I love this poem by Naomi Shihab Nye, written from the perspective of the moon, because it says so much with such simple language. Language that almost calls to mind a nursery rhyme. For many Arab cultures, the moon carries deep meaning and cultural significance. Arab trade routes were historically traveled at night, avoiding the harsh desert heat, lit by the moon and guided by the stars. As such, the Islamic calendar is based on lunar months – a new month begins when a thin crescent is sighted in the sky after a new moon. This poem acknowledges Arab people’s deep connection to the moon in the first stanza, “I think they looked up at me, more than other people do.”

This poem, then, is not just a lament by the moon about what’s happening beneath its watch. This is also a poem about being cut off from a part of your culture. The bombings block the moon’s view of the people, and doubtless their view of the moon. The moon, which for centuries guided their ancestors through the darkness – how disorienting must this feel, how lonely.

At the end of the poem, it’s almost as if the moon itself realizes the enormity of the injustice happening in Gaza, ‘Maybe it is wrong that I am so calm.”

Enough For Me

Fadwa Tuqan

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Enough for me to die on her earth
be buried in her
to melt and vanish into her soil
then sprout forth as a flower
played with by a child from my country.
Enough for me to remain
in my country's embrace
to be in her close as a handful of dust
a sprig of grass
a flower.

We end with Fadwa Tuqan’s devastating poem, “Enough For Me.” There isn’t much I need to say here – it speaks for itself – except that this is what hope feels like for Fadwa. She lived through the Nakba, where between 700,000 and one million Palestinians were violently forced to flee their homes in 1948. Many Palestinians still have the keys to these generational homes. This is the only future Fadwa can imagine in which she returns to her homeland: by being buried in it.

What are your interpretations of these poems? Which speaks to you? Please keep your comments respectful, and related only to the work shared here.

The Fern

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