I Saw it in Palestine

Occupied Voices: Palestinian Poet Mahmud Darwish

This poem came my way via the blog "Raising Yosef" Enjoy.

The siege is lying in wait.
It is lying in wait on a tilted stairway
in the midst of a storm.

We are alone. We are alone to the point
of drunkenness with our own aloneness,
with the occasional rainbow visiting.

We have brothers and sisters overseas..
kind sisters, who love us
who look our way and weep.
And secretly they say
"I wish that siege was here, so that I could..."
But they cannot finish the sentence.
Do not leave us alone. No.
Do not leave us alone.

Our losses are between two and eight a day.
And ten are wounded.
Twenty homes are gone.
Forty olive groves destroyed,
in addition to the structural damage
afflicting the veins of the poem, the play,
and the unfinished painting.

(Mahmud Darwish, A State of Siege, 2002, translated by Ramsis Amun)