Almond vision

Ka zahr al-lawz wa-ab'ad (Like Almond Flowers and Further), Mahmoud Darwish, Beirut: Riad El-Rayyes Books, Sept. 2005. pp197

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Ka zahr al-lawz wa-ab'ad (Like Almond Flowers and Further), Mahmoud Darwish

Mahmoud Darwish requires no introduction. One of the most critically acclaimed Arab poets, he has had numerous prestigious awards, honours and accolades. More importantly, perhaps, he remains the one living Arab poet whose readings in any Arab capital draw tens of thousands of listeners. A new collection of poems by Darwish, naturally enough, is greeted with that much enthsiasm all across the Arab world. And Ka zahr al-louz wa-ab'ad, his latest collection, is no exception. It fetures 34 poems subgrouped under eight headings: He; You; I; She; Exile 1; Exile 2; Exile 3; and Exile 4, the last comprising the long poem Darwish wrote in homage to Edward Said following the latter's death in September 2003.

Entitled "Counterpoint", the poem begins:

New York/ November/ Fifth Avenue

The sun a plate of shredded metal

I asked myself, estranged in the shadow: Is it Babel or Sodom?

***

There, on the doorstep of an electric abyss,

high as the sky, I met Edward,

thirty years ago,

time was less wild then...

We both said:

If the past is only an experience,

make of the future a meaning and a vision.

Let us go,

Let us go into tomorrow trusting the candor of imagination and the miracle of the grass.

Darwish's most recent translations in English -- Mahmoud Darwish: Adam of Two Edens (Jusoor and Syracuse University Press, 2000) and The Raven's Ink: A Chapbook (Lannan Foundation, 2001) -- include many of his acclaimed poems written between 1984 and 1999.