Passport
1964
They did not recognize me in the shadows
That suck away my colour in this Passport
And to them my wound was an exhibit
For a tourist Who loves to collect photographs
They did not recognize me,
Ah . . . Don’t leave
The palm of my hand without the sun
Because the trees recognize me
Don’t leave me pale like the moon!
All the birds that followed my palm
To the door of the distant airport
All the wheatfields
All the prisons
All the white tombstones
All the barbed Boundaries
All the waving handkerchiefs
All the eyes
were with me,
But they dropped them from my passport
Stripped of my name and identity?
On soil I nourished with my own hands?
Today Job cried out
Filling the sky:
Don’t make an example of me again!
Oh, gentlemen, Prophets,
Don’t ask the trees for their names
Don’t ask the valleys who their mother is
From my forehead bursts the sward of light
And from my hand springs the water of the river
All the hearts of the people are my identity
So take away my passport!
Mahmoud Darwish
Born: 13 March 1941, Al-Birwa, Palestine
Nationality: Palestinian
Died: 9 August 2008, Texas, USA
Darwish was a poet and author, regarded as the Palestinian National poet. Darwish won numerous awards for his works. He used Palestine as a metaphor for the loss of Eden, birth, and resurrection, and in the anguish of his dispossession and exile. Darwish has been described as a political poet in Islam, the man of action whose action is poetry
Jezzie G 