Wednesday, March 5, 2008
Mamoon Alabbasi and Robert Green - Poems for the Palestinian people
Artwork by Juan KalvellidoPeople of Palestine
By Mamoon Alabbasi*
Like a slave in the American south
They shall be liberated
Even if it means another civil war
Like a persecuted Jew
They shall survive the genocide
Even if takes another World War
Like beloved yet betrayed Jesus
They shall be back
Even if it would be at the end of time
Like the visionless cured by Jesus
They shall regain their sight
Even if the rest of the world remains blind
Like resurrected flesh
They shall come back to life
Even if it would be at the end of days
Like the Day of Judgement
They shall have justice
Even if it means there will be hell to raise
It matters not on whose side is the Divine
It matters not who shall inherent the heavenly kingdom
While on earth stop the massacre of the people of Palestine
Let peace and justice reign, not Lucifer's Pandemonium
*Mamoon Alabbasi is an editor for Middle-East-online.com and can be reached at: mamoon@meo.tv
Poem by Robert Green, former Board member of Deir Yassin Remembered and distant relative of David Ben GurionYou Want to Quibble Over Whether or Not It’s Genocide?
Then let’s forget the word entirely
it’s a made up modern word
for what’s been done by tribes since before before
made up by Raphael Lemkin
1943
to name what was happening to us
which until then
was known as the crime of barbarity
now genocide
which I know
I agreed not to mention
but it was done to us
and now we’re doing it to the next guy
the Palestinians
if we are allowed that word
like the word ‘Jew’ or really, “Juden”
a word that was supposed to be wiped out
with us
but wasn’t
but our lives
one thousand years in Europe
our home
cleansed of us
and they said we were not a true people
“a people class” said Lenin
“a disease” said others
and now we’re doing it to the next guy
OK, no gas ovens
that we know of
yet
but poison gas aplenty
torture rooms
a special hanging called “a Palestinian hanging”
that now the Americans use
hang a human
by the wrists
tied together
back behind
till they crush their own lungs
over hours
maybe a few days
and die in horror
done so much
it’s called “a Palestinian hanging”
and steal the land
and wall them in
and starve their babies
beat the pregnant women in front of their children
their mothers
their husbands
and the land, stealing it, walling it, pissing on it,
wiping out the place names.
I can’t find my grandmother’s village
on a map of Belarus, what she called “White Russia.”
It was called “Kapulya,” “near Minsk,”
but it’s not there.
as isn’t Palestine.
R.L. Green 2.17.2008
Labels: Gaza, jewish identity politics, journalism, Palestine, poetry, somoud, war
Tuesday, February 5, 2008
Tamim Tamimi - Home... My Sweet Palestine
A young man's mature poetry of yearning. How can such a young man yearn so much? This is Palestine. This is the heart of the people of Palestine. It gives birth to pain that never goes away, a pain that makes young men grow up quickly and grow up sad, but a pain that creates music. Where there is music, there is hope. It is Music for Home. For the home he will one day embrace again. It is waiting for him, and he will be there!Home..
My sweet Palestine home
My heart misses you
If you only knew me
If you only knew what’s in my heart
I’m wounded
Wounded because of you
Because I had to leave you
Nights I remember of you is all I got
My memory can’t or doesn’t want to
Doesn’t want to remember you
When I remember you my heart breaks
My eyes falls into tears
My tears are asking me
My tears are asking me
Asking why they fell down
I told them ‘home' my precious home
I still recall the smell of fresh olives of your land
I still recall the horses running over and into your canyons
The feeling that I miss you
The feeling that I miss you taught me how to sing
To sing for you
Only for you
From far away
I’ve been calling you
But until when
Until when should I repeat the voice of my pain
My wounds are screaming after you my land
* * *
In the middle of the night
The echo of my voice keeps waking me up
Reminding me of the photos of my granparents and of my death
I can’t go on shouting after you
No more
The silence of my voice
Turning into shouts
Sad shouts
I don’t care
Seas won’t forbid me
Walls can't stop me
I shall reach you
The strings of my heart are playing for you
My voice is bleeding to sing for you
A thousand songs my home
A thousand songs I shall play for you
Tomorrow if not today
I shall reach for you my home
Tamim S. Tamimi
University Model School Of Jordan
8th grade
Amman, Jordan
Labels: music, Nakba, Palestine, poetry, somoud
Monday, January 28, 2008
Culture cannot save Israel, Shabtai and more on the Turin Israel Extravaganza
The Israeli poet Aharon Shabtai says “no” also to the Book Fair of Paris. Here is the letter he sent to negatively respond to the invitation of the director of the book fair, dedicated, as is the Turin edition, to Israel.Dear Edna,
Thank you for your letter.
I do not believe that a State that maintains an occupation, committing on a daily basis crimes against civilians, deserves to be invited to any kind of cultural week. That is, it is anti-cultural; it is a barbarian act masked as culture in the most cynical way. It manifests support for Israel, and even to France that sustains the occupation. And I do not want to participate.
Kind regards,
Aharon Shabtai
7 December, 2007
Culture - Aharon Shabtai
The mark of Cain won't sprout
from a soldier who shoots
at the head of a child
at the head of a child
on a knoll by the fence
around a refugee camp-
-for beneath his helmet,
conceptually speaking,
his head is made of cardboard.
On the other hand,
the officer has read The Rebel;
his head is enlightened,
and so he does not believe
in the mark of Cain.
He's spent time in museums,
and when he aims his rifle at a boy
as an ambassador of Culture,
he updates and recycles
Goya's etchings
and Guernica.
ANOTHER LETTER TO VALENTINO PARLATO
Dear Valentino,
I think that for you to have expressed your hasty negative judgment on the proposal of boycotting of the International Book Fair of Turin this year, which has decided to choose as its guest of honour the State of Israel in the year that marks the 60th since its birth, you could and should have used less banal and more convincing arguments. Your fine distinction between the (just) boycott of Apartheid South Africa and the (wrong) boycott of Apartheid Israel is of a subtlety that is even somewhat dangerous to interpret. You write, with a particularly insufferable tone, that “with the 60th anniversary of the foundation of the State of Israel, the Palestinian question inevitably reopens”. In reality, the Palestinian question has been open for 60 years and has never been closed. The State of Palestine, which itself was foreseen by the UN in December 1947, never saw the light of day, not even on that minuscule 22% in which the Palestinian population has been rounded up into after the Nakba, that is, the Catastrophe, that is, the ethnic cleansing of 1948. And it is really strange that you, in order to justify these 60 years of oppression, occupation, apartheid and ethnic cleansing bring in Stalin, notorious organiser of Gulags. It is just as strange that you cite the fact that in the Warsaw Ghetto the last Jews who were the protagonists of a heroic armed resistance (that right to resistance that the cowardly and hypocritical European governments deny to the Palestinians who are occupied militarily and who have been mistreated for decades by Israel), sung the Internationale before being massacred. Those heroes, certainly, would have had nothing whatsoever to do with a State, the State of Israel, that for more than 60 years denies every kind of right to the Palestinian people, that forces them to undergo cruel incarceration in a ghetto and constant genocide. Not in their names, please! Hence, there is nothing to celebrate: next 15 May will be a sad and tragic date, it is the sign of a historical failure and a catastrophe that unfolds day after day. It is with a heavy heart that I write this to you, deeply troubled by your brief article and, I add, aware that the newspaper you edit is one of the very few non-embedded voices and that through your correspondents from Palestine, it is able to still communicate that tragic truth without compromise, taking the side of the victims and not of the persecutors no matter what ethnic group or religion they belong to.
I think that for you to have expressed your hasty negative judgment on the proposal of boycotting of the International Book Fair of Turin this year, which has decided to choose as its guest of honour the State of Israel in the year that marks the 60th since its birth, you could and should have used less banal and more convincing arguments. Your fine distinction between the (just) boycott of Apartheid South Africa and the (wrong) boycott of Apartheid Israel is of a subtlety that is even somewhat dangerous to interpret. You write, with a particularly insufferable tone, that “with the 60th anniversary of the foundation of the State of Israel, the Palestinian question inevitably reopens”. In reality, the Palestinian question has been open for 60 years and has never been closed. The State of Palestine, which itself was foreseen by the UN in December 1947, never saw the light of day, not even on that minuscule 22% in which the Palestinian population has been rounded up into after the Nakba, that is, the Catastrophe, that is, the ethnic cleansing of 1948. And it is really strange that you, in order to justify these 60 years of oppression, occupation, apartheid and ethnic cleansing bring in Stalin, notorious organiser of Gulags. It is just as strange that you cite the fact that in the Warsaw Ghetto the last Jews who were the protagonists of a heroic armed resistance (that right to resistance that the cowardly and hypocritical European governments deny to the Palestinians who are occupied militarily and who have been mistreated for decades by Israel), sung the Internationale before being massacred. Those heroes, certainly, would have had nothing whatsoever to do with a State, the State of Israel, that for more than 60 years denies every kind of right to the Palestinian people, that forces them to undergo cruel incarceration in a ghetto and constant genocide. Not in their names, please! Hence, there is nothing to celebrate: next 15 May will be a sad and tragic date, it is the sign of a historical failure and a catastrophe that unfolds day after day. It is with a heavy heart that I write this to you, deeply troubled by your brief article and, I add, aware that the newspaper you edit is one of the very few non-embedded voices and that through your correspondents from Palestine, it is able to still communicate that tragic truth without compromise, taking the side of the victims and not of the persecutors no matter what ethnic group or religion they belong to.
Vincenzo Tradardi
ISM Italia
Parma 24 January 2008
Translated from Italian by Mary Rizzo, member of Tlaxcala, network of translators for linguistic diversity.
Labels: activism, boycott, good news, hasbara, Israel, Italy, journalism, Palestine, poetry
Sunday, January 27, 2008
Turin Book Fair "Israel Guest of Honour", and the debate begins!
at the left, a book to BUY!Turin will host the International Book Fair in May. Already, there has been quite a bit of movement about it in activist circles. Why? Because the Guest of Honour is Israel, and 60 Authors (magic of numbers?) will be the highlighted ones. Aharon Shabtai already said NO! Ibrahim Nasrallah said NO! and others too have raised their voices. Strange thing thought, the leading Left Newspaper il manifesto, who takes money for the paid ad for supporting Gaza, comes out against the Boycott. It is the reasoning behind it that is incredible. Read this editorial by Valentino Parlato and this response (I will translate more later, I have a growing list here) by Diego Traversa.
A WRONG BOYCOTT
By Valentino Parlato (from il manifesto, 24/01/08)
The International Book Fair will be held in Turin next May (from the 8th to the 12th) but it is already arousing quarrels and polemics that have concerned even our tenacious and tolerant group. The fair is being held in the 60th anniversary of Israel’s foundation and therefore, quite inevitably, the Palestinian question gets resumed.
After World War II and the massacre of the Jews, it was necessary to recognize their right to have a territory and a state of their own. Even Stalin was in favour of the foundation of Israel while Great Britain, a fact of not minor importance, was against it. And it’s my personal memory to insist that the Arab world wouldn’t have accepted a Jewish state, it favoured great manifestations of resistance: in Tripoli (where I lived at that time) a violent and blooddy anti-Jewish pogrom took place in a complicit indifference of the British military authorities.
Today’s polemics regard this Book Fair, one that gives Israel a place of honour with the risk of a literary legitimization of its policies. Let me say first that I have no position in principle against the boycott, since it was more than fair to endorse it against the racist white South Africans. But there’s boycott and boycott and therefore I’m completely against boycotting this Book Fair (books must be always respected) and against boycotting Israel. The Israelis, who after all are still Jews, no matter how many wrongs as they have done against the Palestinians, can by no means be compared with the racist South Africans and moreover, there’s a point that we can’t forget and, by no means a small one, that there is the historical persecution of the Jewish people, there are the ghettos and the concentration camps.
At this point is useful recalling what I was told in an interview to il manifesto with Rome’s Chief Rabbi. In the Warsaw Ghetto, the last song the Jews sung was the Internationale (translator’s note, Communist anthem). And then they were slaughtered by the Germans.
Hence let’s take advantage of this International Book Fair of Turin to talk, to criticize Israel’s policies, to uphold the Palestinians’ rights who, in those territories, seem to have turned into the new Jews. Let’s talk and argue with each other, but let’s tell the boycott to go to hell. Not only because the Israelis are Jews and not Afrikaaners, but also because the boycott is mute. It’s a no without any arguments. Next May in Turin there are going to be Jewish writers of high stature and we must talk, reason, argue and defend the Palestinian people’s rights along with them. I’m aware of the ancestral fears of Israel’s people. I’m aware of their fear, I was told by a good Israeli ambassador in Rome, of being the target of renewed crusades. I think I can understand, but Israel must be more Jewish with the Palestinians. It must consider them as close relatives. But just because of all this, the boycott serves only to be detrimental the Palestinians and the Israelis.
Translated by Diego Traversa and revised by Mary Rizzo
By Valentino Parlato (from il manifesto, 24/01/08)
The International Book Fair will be held in Turin next May (from the 8th to the 12th) but it is already arousing quarrels and polemics that have concerned even our tenacious and tolerant group. The fair is being held in the 60th anniversary of Israel’s foundation and therefore, quite inevitably, the Palestinian question gets resumed.
After World War II and the massacre of the Jews, it was necessary to recognize their right to have a territory and a state of their own. Even Stalin was in favour of the foundation of Israel while Great Britain, a fact of not minor importance, was against it. And it’s my personal memory to insist that the Arab world wouldn’t have accepted a Jewish state, it favoured great manifestations of resistance: in Tripoli (where I lived at that time) a violent and blooddy anti-Jewish pogrom took place in a complicit indifference of the British military authorities.
Today’s polemics regard this Book Fair, one that gives Israel a place of honour with the risk of a literary legitimization of its policies. Let me say first that I have no position in principle against the boycott, since it was more than fair to endorse it against the racist white South Africans. But there’s boycott and boycott and therefore I’m completely against boycotting this Book Fair (books must be always respected) and against boycotting Israel. The Israelis, who after all are still Jews, no matter how many wrongs as they have done against the Palestinians, can by no means be compared with the racist South Africans and moreover, there’s a point that we can’t forget and, by no means a small one, that there is the historical persecution of the Jewish people, there are the ghettos and the concentration camps.
At this point is useful recalling what I was told in an interview to il manifesto with Rome’s Chief Rabbi. In the Warsaw Ghetto, the last song the Jews sung was the Internationale (translator’s note, Communist anthem). And then they were slaughtered by the Germans.
Hence let’s take advantage of this International Book Fair of Turin to talk, to criticize Israel’s policies, to uphold the Palestinians’ rights who, in those territories, seem to have turned into the new Jews. Let’s talk and argue with each other, but let’s tell the boycott to go to hell. Not only because the Israelis are Jews and not Afrikaaners, but also because the boycott is mute. It’s a no without any arguments. Next May in Turin there are going to be Jewish writers of high stature and we must talk, reason, argue and defend the Palestinian people’s rights along with them. I’m aware of the ancestral fears of Israel’s people. I’m aware of their fear, I was told by a good Israeli ambassador in Rome, of being the target of renewed crusades. I think I can understand, but Israel must be more Jewish with the Palestinians. It must consider them as close relatives. But just because of all this, the boycott serves only to be detrimental the Palestinians and the Israelis.
Translated by Diego Traversa and revised by Mary Rizzo
Memory, Hypocrisy and that Messy Little Place of Honour
By Diego Traversa
By Diego Traversa
Despite all the respect that I might have for Valentino Parlato, I am writing to express how stunned his editorial on the Turin Book Fair has left me.
It seemed to me a very simplistic and dogmatic article, overflowing to the brim with hypocrisy and a “feel-good” sentiment. But, of course, it’s still January, the Day of Holocaust Memory is upon us so naturally all of us must acknowledge how important it is to be philo-Jewish, all of us to kneel down humbly and to make amends for the horrors of the past. And, since I am here, I am going to take advantage of the opportunity myself, to absolve my duty and publicly ask pardon from all Jews: forgive us for what our people did to you and forgive me if I had a grandfather who was a convinced Fascist.
Having said this, let’s go back to dig through the lines of the article by Valentino Parlato, authoritative and legendary voice of il manifesto.
His comments on the upcoming Book Fair of Turin seem to me at the very least pointless and contradictory.
In the first place, it is not true that it was necessary to give a state to the Jews and further, neither is it true that Stalin was in agreement: his was mere political shrewdness, oriented at extending the Russian dominion towards the Mediterranean. This is indeed true in that Russia radically changed its politics by becoming fiercely anti-Zionist, just to show how much Stalin had the Jewish people close to heart!
It seemed to me a very simplistic and dogmatic article, overflowing to the brim with hypocrisy and a “feel-good” sentiment. But, of course, it’s still January, the Day of Holocaust Memory is upon us so naturally all of us must acknowledge how important it is to be philo-Jewish, all of us to kneel down humbly and to make amends for the horrors of the past. And, since I am here, I am going to take advantage of the opportunity myself, to absolve my duty and publicly ask pardon from all Jews: forgive us for what our people did to you and forgive me if I had a grandfather who was a convinced Fascist.
Having said this, let’s go back to dig through the lines of the article by Valentino Parlato, authoritative and legendary voice of il manifesto.
His comments on the upcoming Book Fair of Turin seem to me at the very least pointless and contradictory.
In the first place, it is not true that it was necessary to give a state to the Jews and further, neither is it true that Stalin was in agreement: his was mere political shrewdness, oriented at extending the Russian dominion towards the Mediterranean. This is indeed true in that Russia radically changed its politics by becoming fiercely anti-Zionist, just to show how much Stalin had the Jewish people close to heart!
The pivot of Parlato’s theorem is that one must reject the anti-Israeli boycott for an entire set of reasons: because the Jews have suffered unspeakable wrongs, because they can’t be compared to racist white South Africans (as a matter of curiosity, who knows if the Israeli magnates of the diamond industry momentarily put aside their traffic with South Africa when the entire world was practicing the boycott…) and especially because the Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto, before they were massacred by the Nazis, “sang the Internationale”.
What kind of discourse is he engaged in?
It is as if the sole fact of having had relatives who are evacuated and socialists guarantees any individual whatsoever the right to act any way he wants, stepping on the rights of others. It is almost like saying that the single mother in Taranto who made an unauthorised occupation of the house of that old woman who was taken to the hospital has the right to do such a thing. Even if this example does not fit like a glove, seeing as how the Israelis have done much more than occupy someone else’s house unlawfully.
In the first place, theirs is not a popular nationalism, but rather a nationalism imposed from on high, born out of diplomatic trafficking and intrigue between powers when the Jewish masses had not even the slightest interest in searching for a new country. Furthermore, it was not only the Jewish Socialist leaders who brought forward demands of independence, but even the ultra-conservatives and the representatives of the petit bourgeois and the middle classes. As a matter of fact, truth to tell, the history of Israel is nothing but an anthem, the triumph of an ideology that is one of the most reactionary possible. After the Ben-Gurions and Moshe Sharetts (who, rather than Socialists, I would define National Socialists), came the Begins, the Shamirs, and the Sharons to model modern Zionism, that is, the “ideological” children of that Vladimir Jabotinsky who promoted the crudest nationalism by supporting violence and the transfer of the Palestinian people. Therefore, telling us the story that the Jews sang the Internationale as valid argumentation to justify the existence of the Jewish state seems to me quite absurd, if not outright ridiculous and unjust, as if the destruction and violence committed against the indigenous Americans was justified by the religious persecution that the founding fathers and pilgrims of the Mayflower underwent and rendered dignified by their sacred hymns.
Yet, I don’t wish to focus too much attention on the history of Israel, but I can’t help but notice that the entire contradiction expressed by Parlato comes to the surface when he talks about boycotting: first he insists that it was right to enact that instrument against South Africans, but then he summons that the boycott is useless because it is “a no without arguments”.
It seems to me that the boycott is a civil and democratic form of non-violent protest: it is not censorship, forbidding someone to speak. It is only an outspoken way to express dissent. Specifically, considering the place of honour that has been given to the writers of Israel, it is more than opportune to should dissent against the exponents (respectable or not as they may be) of a country as racist, militaristic and warlike as Israel. Precisely because the Israelis have not learned anything from their past; precisely because they should be the first to oppose the modern horrors committed in Palestine, being, as we are constantly reminded, the “only” people to have known just what true suffering is; and especially because they do not treat the Palestinians like Semitic brothers (quite the opposite, they hate them a great deal, as witnessed in the widespread racism within Israeli society).
I am sorry for those Israeli writers who rightly point their fingers at the terrible politics enacted by their government, but unfortunately, this event in Turn has taken on a stale and disgusting taste of institutional legitimisation of Israel: the first to boycott this disgrace should be precisely those same writers who know firsthand what it means to live in Palestine today and how much horror Zionism has brought about. Theirs would be a clamorous deed, more meaningful than a thousand boycotts.
In regards to Valentino Parlato, I can only say: January may have become the Month of Memory but, please, let’s be careful it does not become the Month of Hypocrisy.
Translated from Italian by Mary Rizzo. Diego Traversa and Mary Rizzo are both members of Tlaxcala, network of translators for linguistic diversity.
Labels: activism, boycott, gatekeeping, hasbara, Israel, Italy, jewish identity politics, journalism, poetry, Zionism
Thursday, January 24, 2008
Nahida Izzat - Two poems for the beloved people of Gaza
Photo from Free Gaza, one of many photos of the people of Gaza.Beloved people of Gaza
Treasured people of Palestine
Teachers of courage and dignity
Archetype of humanity
Allow me to kneel down
And wash your feet with my tears
Kiss your blessed hands
And sprinkle your beautiful faces with musk and roses
While we sat pondering like fools
Utterly helpless
Talking much and doing less
Going round and round in circles
Thinking how to help
What to offer you to relief some of your pain
As usual
Full of surprises, you come out to our rescue, to soothe our agony
You present us with the most precious gifts
Lessons in bravery
Steadfastness, patience, perseverance, defiance, resilience
Optimism against all odds
Creativity in the face of utter oblivion
You’ve demonstrated that you are the free ones … we are the captives
You chose resistance over subjugation
You decided not to be enslaved
Not even to superpowers
Would we ever learn from you?
I Believe in Miracles
You can break my bones
My free spirit is invincible
You can cause me the loss of sight
The light of my insight
You’ll never take away
In the shadows of darkness
Lies the corpse of your might
You can destroy my house
The windows of my hope,
You cannot break
The pillars of my faith
You can never shake
You can threaten me
With weapons of death
And mass destruction
Implanting fear in my heart
You cannot achieve
Nor can you cut off
My divine connection
With a missile
You can tear my body apart
My soul however
Is out of your reach
And is forever intact
You claimed victory in six days!
Victorious are those
With a dignified gaze
Facing tanks with tender flesh
And only with stones,
The F16 fighter blaze
You can never defeat my will to be
Because my power that you cannot explain
Grows from within the roots of my pain
You depend on the United States
For wealth and war supply
My infinite strength stems from
My creator, the One most high
Nahida is the author of many poems, prose and articles. Her site is http://poetryforpalestine.spaces.live.com/
Labels: activism, friends, Gaza, good news, Palestine, poetry, somoud
Sunday, January 13, 2008
Two Palestinian Poets: Nahida Izzat and Iqbal Tamimi
Thank you
By Nahida Izzat
So, let me get this straight:
You tear my veil to free me
You jail me to rid me of my terror
You kill my beloved to liberate me
You shoot my baby to erase my misery
You starve me to show me how to vote
You threaten me to bring me to my senses
You wage war on me to help me find peace
You slay my people to teach me compassion
You humiliate me to aid me live with dignity
You insult me to illustrate freedom of speech
You crush my bones to save me from my evil
You demolish my home to elevate my morality
You uproot my tree to raise my ethical standard
You steal my resources to bring me social justice
You assassinate my leaders to bring me security
You bomb my town to train me into democracy
You destroy my history to educate me about progress
You dehumanise me to coach me into humanity
You wipe me out to push me to civilisation
You scorn my faith to bring me salvation
Thank you sir
How can I -ever- pay you back?
So, let me get this straight:
You tear my veil to free me
You jail me to rid me of my terror
You kill my beloved to liberate me
You shoot my baby to erase my misery
You starve me to show me how to vote
You threaten me to bring me to my senses
You wage war on me to help me find peace
You slay my people to teach me compassion
You humiliate me to aid me live with dignity
You insult me to illustrate freedom of speech
You crush my bones to save me from my evil
You demolish my home to elevate my morality
You uproot my tree to raise my ethical standard
You steal my resources to bring me social justice
You assassinate my leaders to bring me security
You bomb my town to train me into democracy
You destroy my history to educate me about progress
You dehumanise me to coach me into humanity
You wipe me out to push me to civilisation
You scorn my faith to bring me salvation
Thank you sir
How can I -ever- pay you back?
Nahida is a Jerusalem-born poet living in exile. Her site is: http://poetryforpalestine.spaces.live.com/, her Palestinian Mothers page is: http://palestinian.ning.com/profile/nahida
Poetry can never be translated 100%, the moment my words leave my heart to occupy yours, it loses some of its identity, and almost all its music. But still poetry is a form of communication used to express one's feeling in a very special way. I leave you here with one of my poems.Legged Stones
By Iqbal Tamimi
The bed of defeat has always been feminine
Ever since the sky was within reach
a womb less pillow of Vanilla
Giving birth to scandals
The thorns took advantage.
Climbing the shoulders of the bare peach
Stealing the bride,
Whose perfume has never swung in the wind
The apple went mad
Glued his grief
to the fingers of his land.
Took off his desire
Shouted, cried
I’ve perfected banging water drums
Because my share of plight, is exactly as yours
Thought my teardrops
could quench the hatred fire.
We all perfected the game
Attacking the features of things
We dallied with the nails of our jailer
Who bought the East
sometimes with prayers.
Other times
With a convoy of female slaves
The knight of the mountains
Has been collecting our wounds
To sprinkle them on a heap of dew
Waited for a long time
Until the stones sprouted legs
Chasing the mud groom
Who tested the virginity of heavens
Bearing on the shoulders of his winter
His imported season.
Screamed.. His shirt
Rescue me please, from this cold body
My circle has been defeated by armies of frost
Chased by eagles of dust
Throw your body
Against the ink lorry
Drown your sorrow in a cup of coffee or..
Die standing up like a wall
Defend the thyme’s hymen
Defend a wagon.
Ready to load the victims of tremor
Fight for
Poems, honey flavored
Document your defeat ...if you choose
On a crying poem
For a lilac, became a naked martyr
While building a pavement, for the news.
Iqbal is a Palestinian poet and journalist from Hebron living in exile. She founded the Palestinian Mothers Community on the web. Her page is: http://palestinian.ning.com/profile/Iqbal
Labels: human rights violations, Nakba, occupation, Palestine, poetry
