[The following is a selection from the poems that were read on May 2, 2011, at a special memorial evening held at the University of Washington in Seattle to honor the memory of Hussein Al-Barghouti (1954-2002). They been have been translated especially for Jadaliyya in order to draw the attention to the remarkable poetry of this Palestinian poet, who graduated from the University of Washington in 1992 with a PhD in Comparative literature. After his return to Palestine in the same year and until his premature death, Al-Barghouti was an influential poet, professor, critic, playwright, scholar and a dedicated patron of Palestinian culture. The literary legacy that Al-Barghouti left behind includes more than sixteen books of poetry, essays, criticism, folklore, memoires, prose and novel, most notably the posthumous memoires The Blue Light (2004) and I Will Be Among the Almond Tree (2004). The following poems capture some of the themes and sensibilities that characterize these memoirs, particularly the poetics of memory and place and the deep attachment to nature in the Palestinian landscape that fueled Al-Barghouti’s keen interest in existentialism.]

Poems by Hussein Al-Barghouti

State of Mind

I live and my heart goes out to no one.

I feel no sadness

and harm no roses.

Like black grease on a wheel

in the belly of a machine,

all inside me mechanical. 

Birds made of rubber in a cage of colored sand

and my face a fountain in winter-- flowing  

New coldness in the air. I lean

where the "powers" throw me: towards memories

from old cities, or a shop full of words that look like a lit-up bar

where jazz is playing and the customers sleep at the tables.

I pass by, in me the bitterness of a shadow

and my eyes are boredom and metal.

[untitled]

Do not guide me to the moonlit path

daughter of my uncle

The guided must walk the path of the guide

Each must forge his own path. 

Do not guide me to the moonlit path

while the flute is on the lips of the mermaid

This is too little--

Guide me to the truth

and leave me silent,

like the mountains of the Galilee.

[untitled]

The waterfalls were forty seven,

all falling in one pool.

The last was pure and foamy

and I followed it.

The waterfalls were forty seven,

all falling in one pool.

The last was like my heart

but I lost it.

[untitled]

We came to crack some songs

Just as we crack almonds

and search there for doves.

We found little stone soldiers

inhabiting words.

[untitled]

Your white fingers pass through my dream

like ten mirrors

where I see my face like a fire without smoke

O my desire for tenderness

Don`t wound my heart!

It happens in my dream that I long for you

and alight in your eyes

like a flock of doves

on a city sidewalk in winter 

and I peck at the vibration of light in the puddles and ask:

"O street full of lights! What is the color of the sky?

And why are they dancing? "

"Where can I pass when breast is upon breast?" (Mahmoud Darwish)

Sometimes I dance there, a stranger

among strangers on a street

with snow from the moon

where neon lamps are breasts of glass

washing my face in faded-white light

near ice that had frozen over

ivory fountains.

Do not ask me:

"Why do you like to travel 

in the waves of my eyes?"

Fish swim deep

when they sense the coming of a quake

and the trembling of things.

My love of trembling: my search is for my soul

Regardless of the end

Whether a kiss or the guillotine.

So come to me

that I may carry your wild body in my palm

like a compass

and watch you spread

like light upon the ships of words.

[untitled]

The roads of modern airports open out to

labyrinths of light.

In every darkness we have a light, and

in every light we have a path, and

in every path we have a span, and

in every span, we have a trap, and

in every trap, we have the meat of a thigh, and

in every thigh, we are the first to be blamed!

In every song we have a letter, and

in every letter we have a love, and

in every love we have a heart, and

in every heart we have tranquility, a gazelle and a homeland.

So forgive me

for I descended from trees of blood, or ice or nothingness

like a sad flock of birds of prey.

And I was told:

You have no voice

In life,

and afterwards there is only sleep 

On a land without a grave,

no fate leads to hell and no way to paradise

So,

come, like the birds, if you wish

out of the rot of now, or the rot of yesterday.

 [untitled]

In Jerusalem, under the golden dome

The language of God above the geometric wall is saturated with blue,

black and maroon in the letters Mim and Ra`.

If you see a sky half blue and half black

And the sun is red like ink--there is my sky

Among the pines, and the shade and the singing of birds

with the color of earth,

I forgot "Kitab Al-Aghani"[1]

And engraved on the dome of my eyelids the letters of change and waves

And a desert of stars above the caravan of Al-Asfahani

When you see Jerusalem, pass by

that golden dome 

The language of God above the geometric wall is saturated

with the yellow of the narcissus. 

Among the whiteness of doves in the Persian rugs

between the first arches of a green night, 

among the apples and the gold,

the lover of geometries crucified me.

Don`t blame me if I don`t circle around the Prophet:

My aim is God

And God has no form that I may shape my life by calling upon Him 

I appeal to you to go see Jerusalem

O child of the waves, shades of lilacs!

Greet her

and kiss

the earth there

and adorn your eyes

with the slope of the shadow

Pass your chest by her water

and if you were to be asked:

"Are you playing or ritually washing?"

Say: I touch the essence of things with my heart

to become pure

under a sky that I do not own.

[Translated by Amal Eqeiq. With special thanks to Ibrahim Muhawi for editorial assistance.]