The Horse Fell Off the Poem

By Mahmoud Darwish 1942–2008 Mahmoud Darwish

Translated By Fady Joudah

The horse fell off the poem

and the Galilean women were wet

with butterflies and dew,

dancing above chrysanthemum

The two absent ones: you and I

you and I are the two absent ones

A pair of white doves

chatting on the branches of a holm oak

No love, but I love ancient

love poems that guard

the sick moon from smoke

I attack and retreat, like the violin in quatrains

I get far from my time when I am near

the topography of place ...

There is no margin in modern language left

to celebrate what we love,

because all that will be ... was

The horse fell bloodied

with my poem

and I fell bloodied

with the horse’s blood ...

Reprinted from The Butterfly’s Burden (2007) by Mahmoud Darwish, translated by Fady Joudah. Used by permission of Copper Canyon Press, www.coppercanyonpress.org.

Source: The Butterfly’s Burden (Copper Canyon Press, 2007)

Biography

Palestinian Mahmoud Darwish was born in al-Birwa in Galilee, a village that was occupied and later razed by the Israeli army. Because they had missed the official Israeli census, Darwish and his family were considered “internal refugees” or “present-absent aliens.” Darwish lived for many years in exile in Beirut and Paris. He is the author of over 30 books of poetry and eight books of prose, and earned the Lannan Cultural . . .

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