Mahmoud Darwish

A River Dies of Thirst

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  • Hina Usmanhas quoted9 days ago
    scene is the same as ever. Summer and sweat, and an imagination incapable of seeing beyond the horizon. And today is better than tomorrow. But the dead are what’s new. They’re born every day and when they’re trying to sleep death takes them away from their drowsiness into a sleep without dreams. It’s not worth counting them. None of them asks for help from anyone. Voices search for words in the open country, and the echo comes back clearly, woundingly: ‘There’s nobody here.’
  • Rafael Narvalhas quoted7 months ago
    Even if you were not the absence you are, I would be the presence I am
  • Rafael Narvalhas quoted7 months ago
    Tomorrow does not concern me. It’s an idea
    that does not seduce me. I am what I am: nothing
    will change me, just as I will change
    nothing, so don’t keep the sun off me!
  • Rafael Narvalhas quoted7 months ago
    ‘Tomorrow I will climb a higher hill to see the sea beyond the settlements. But I will strap my shadow to me so I don’t lose it again.’
  • Rafael Narvalhas quoted7 months ago
    A voice without words rocks me, kneads me and forms me into a vessel which exudes a substance neither from it nor in it, like a feeling searching for someone to feel it.
  • Rafael Narvalhas quoted8 months ago
    Individuals, if they wake up alive, can still say ‘Good morning,’ then go off to their normal jobs: burying the dead.
  • Rafael Narvalhas quoted8 months ago
    Apart from that, abnormal life appears to be running its normal course.
  • Rafael Narvalhas quoted8 months ago
    Rebel against me as much as you can, and run
    for there’s nothing behind us except what’s behind.’
  • Rafael Narvalhas quoted9 months 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 quoted9 months ago
    If we were to listen intently to the sound of silence, we would talk less.
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