home

This year in particular, I can't wrap up poetry month without Mahmoud Darwish. At the beginning of the month, I think there was a part of me that hoped that by the time we got here, he might not feel quite so immediately and desperately relevant—but that's not where we are, and frankly it's not where we've been for all eighteen years that I've been posting poems (and longer). I could have done an entire month of Mahmoud Darwish at basically any point in those eighteen years, even if it feels more acute and immediate right now.

It was also a challenge to decide on a poem, but earlier in the month I committed to this one, and I stand by it—I love this one. That said, you should also (at the least) go read Think of Others and In Jerusalem.

I belong there. I have many memories. I was born as everyone is born.
I have a mother, a house with many windows, brothers, friends, and a prison cell
with a chilly window! I have a wave snatched by seagulls, a panorama of my own.
I have a saturated meadow. In the deep horizon of my word, I have a moon,
a bird’s sustenance, and an immortal olive tree.
I have lived on the land long before swords turned man into prey.
I belong there. When heaven mourns for her mother, I return heaven to her mother.
And I cry so that a returning cloud might carry my tears.
To break the rules, I have learned all the words needed for a trial by blood.
I have learned and dismantled all the words in order to draw from them a
single word: Home.

—Mahmoud Darwish (1941-2008), "I Belong There," from Unfortunately, It Was Paradise, translated and edited by Munir Akash and Carolyn Forché with Sinan Antoon and Amira El-Zein (2003).