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    Why Did You Leave the Horse Alone?
    Why Did You Leave the Horse Alone?
    Why Did You Leave the Horse Alone?
    Ebook119 pages1 hour

    Why Did You Leave the Horse Alone?

    By Mahmoud Darwish and Mohammad Shaheen

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    About this ebook

    A stunning new translation of Mahmoud Darwish's intertwining poetic narrative, presenting a profound portrait of the Palestinian people, the human condition, and Darwish's own hopes and dreams

    Since Mahmoud Darwish's death, his poetic writings continue to be read by an audience in awe. This is a collection of autobiographical poetry designed to give an insight into the wider human condition. Darwish explores the meaning of life, identity, and the impact of exile. Hailed as the most important Arab poet of the modern day, Darwish's voice has come to represent a generation and the Palestinian people in the midst of the tense political situation in the Middle East. While Darwish explored themes of lost Eden, exile, and life after death, he resisted classification as a spokesperson for the Palestinian cause, and refused to use his art for purely political ends. Darwish's was a nomadic existence, much of it spent in international exile, and these experiences lent his writing a cosmopolitan edge—they partake of a worldwide mythology.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHesperus Classics
    Release dateNov 1, 2014
    ISBN9781780943411
    Why Did You Leave the Horse Alone?
    Author

    Mahmoud Darwish

    Mahmoud Darwish (1941 - 2008) was the author of over thirty books of poems, including Memory for Forgetfulness: August, Beirut, 1982 (California, 1995), The Adam of Two Edens (2001), and Psalms (1994). He received the 2001 Prize for Cultural Freedom from the Lannan Foundation. Munir Akash is a founding editor of Jusoor, The Arab American Journal of Cultural Exchange, and coeditor of The Adam of Two Edens (2001) and Post Gibran: Anthropology of New Arab American Writing (2000). Carolyn Forché is Professor of English at George Mason University and author of The Angel of History (1994). Sinan Antoon is coeditor of Arab Studies Journal. Amira El-Zein is the author of Bedouin of Hell (1992) and The Book of Palm Trees (1973). Fady Joudah is a prize-winning poet, translator, and physician. He is the author of The Earth in the Attic (2008) and Alight (2013), and the translator of two volumes of Mahmoud Darwish’s poetry, The Butterfly’s Burden (2007) and If I Were Another (2009).

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      Book preview

      Why Did You Leave the Horse Alone? - Mahmoud Darwish

      CONTENTS

      Title Page

      INTRODUCTION

      I See My Ghost Coming from Afar…

      I. ICONS OF LOCAL CRYSTAL

      A Cloud in My Hand

      Villagers, Without Evil…

      Night of the Owl

      The Eternity of the Prickly Pear

      How Many Times Shall Things Be Over?

      To My End And to Its End…

      II. ABEL’S SPACE

      The Oud of Isma’il

      The Strangers’ Walk

      Raven’s Ink

      The Tatars’ Swallow

      The Train Went by

      III. CHAOS AT THE ENTRANCE OF JUDGMENT DAY

      The Well

      Like the ‘Nūn; in Surrat ‘al-Rahman’

      Houriyyah’s Teachings

      Ivory Combs

      Phases of Anat

      The Death of the Phoenix

      IV. A ROOM FOR TALKING TO THE SELF

      Poetic Steps

      From the Rumiyyat of Abu Firas al-Hamadani

      From Sky to her Sister Dreamers Pass

      Said the Traveller to the Traveller: We Shall not Return as…

      Rhyme for the Mu’allaqat

      The Sparrow, As It Is, As It Is…

      V. RAIN OVER THE CHURCH TOWER

      Helen, What Rain

      A Night Which Flows from the Body

      For the Gypsy, an Experienced Sky

      First Exercises on a Spanish Guitar

      Seven Days of Love

      VI. RING THE CURTAIN DOWN…

      The Testimony of Bertolt Brecht before a Military Court

      A Disagreement, Non-Linguistic, with Imru’ al-Qais

      Successions for Another Time

      …When He Walks Away

      BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

      Copyright

      INTRODUCTION

      On a visit to Mahmoud Darwish at his flat in Amman I carried with me a small tape recorder with the intention of recording him reading two poems: ‘How Many Times Shall Things Be Over?’ and ‘To My End and to Its End’. Mahmoud was courteous enough to acquiesce to my demand, which I had thought perhaps too much to ask, simply because he used to recite his poetry before a large audience (sometimes thousands) and at a spacious place! The first poem expresses the sense of betrayal caused by the agents of the 1948 war, which consequently forced the poet and his family to leave their home and take shelter in the neighbouring country, Lebanon. Mahmoud renders his father’s recollection of the experience not ‘in tranquility’ but from the most upsetting situation in which he and his family suddenly found themselves caught. It was a harsh summer for the Darwish family to live as refugees in Lebanon, scanning their eyes across the border to their deserted home with ‘the horse left alone’ and ripe crops of the summer season left uncollected for the first time. The other poem is an account of the horrible trip they decided to take back during the night, stealing across the borders towards their home. The trip is obviously very dangerous, as it would cost them their life if they were spotted by the border police, but luckily they made it. On various occasions later in life, Mahmoud declared that the experience of crossing the borders on foot in the heart of darkness had been deeply carved in his memory. The title of this volume is derived from this experience of interpersonality included in the two poems mentioned above.

      Listening to Mahmoud Darwish reciting the two poems one might assume that the poems were written by the six-year-old child rather than by the mature poet, for the eloquence of the poems makes you visualize the event of lyricism as evidence rather than lyricism contrived in abstract by words. In Pound’s comment on poetry and poets (in a letter to Kate Buss 9th March 1916) ‘The poem is not so much the expression of a lyrical state as evidence for such a state. The poet is out to avoid at all costs the poetry that is an asylum for [the] affections.’ In Age of Iron Coetze similarly tells us that the purpose of his narrative is not to solicit pity but to help us see things as they happen. Mahmoud Darwish’s poetry falls into the realm of this kind of objectivity, presumably articulated by Eliot’s ‘objective correlative’.

      After I had translated the two poems into English, I showed them to Mahmoud. It seemed he had just received a translation of Why Did You Leave the Horse Alone? His response was: ‘the horse left alone has not been fortunate enough to receive a translation I favour, despite the fact that it is my most favourable collection of poetry’. He continued to say that he was not even sent a proof copy to read! I was not in a position to make any comment, simply because I did not know the edition he was talking about, not having seen the translation to which he was referring. In the course of our conversation he suggested that I could try to translate the volume in question, and I considered the offer a privilege, adding to the previous privilege I had of translating Almond Blossoms and Beyond and Absent Presence. He actually read those proofs word by word, and I still have his handwritten remarks made on the rough copy he used to read the texts.

      * * *

      Here I am then,

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