a curatorial content blog of modern and contemporary poetry, poetics, photography, philosophy, permaculture, and the arts

for dirk, in and out of omaha

Maria Concetta Conti

Lucia Cardillo

Angiola Inglese

Giuliana Ravaglia

Louise Hopewell

Eufemia Griffo

Clayton Beach

Margherita Petriccione

Kristen Lindquist

Angela Giordano

Source: February, 2019 – Otata 38

At the End of Things

by Mahmoud Darwish 

Fruit on the point of falling from the trees
That is the end and the beginning or an expression for travel
.
At the cellar’s end space is shattered and is enlarged.
WE cannot search for a thing and words which would free a wall
Within us. And the streets would open for us to pass.
.
Two shadows are removed from us, than spread an intangible and invisible night
Who can love after you? Who will be healed of the wounds of the salt
After you? In the marriage of sea and night the heart turns towards you,
It did not find us, it did not find a partridge dressed in stone.
.
At the cellar’s end we reach the wisdom of the slain, we balance
Our present and our past so as to be delivered from tomorrow’s nightmares
Our days are trees. How many moons have wanted you as a bride fro the sea,
How many winds have wanted to blow so you might take me by my hand.
Our days are leaves on the point of falling with the rain.
.
Nothing remains for the dead save the final excuses,
There is no place here for us
To sit long in front of the sea. So let us clear a way for flowers
And for the feet of children so that they may learn to walk quickly to the graves.
Our experience has grown and our words have shrunk
So let us be extinguished
And let us hide
In the story of ancestors and travel leadind to travel.
.
At the cellar’s end everything falls from our hands.
The scent of almond cannot bring us back neither can the Damascus road.
At the end of things we ask everything that stops the last fruit from falling
But we pass on to the fate of fruits in the arrogance of new lovers.
– Do not remember me when your embryo grows. Do not tread on my dream or hear my sleep
– Do not be angry with me. Or be angry with the memory and the rust on the doves’ feathers.
At the end of things we understand how the Moon slays us and disowns us.
.
At the end of things words break on our fingers and we hide
What hid from us and which we did not know. And we spare the last rose of the house
If you come, my song, and do not find your shoe, know that I lied to the place.
If you come, my song, and do not find your cry, know that I lied to the echo.
If you come, my song, and do not find its end, love me a little so you may love in vain.
If you come, my song, and do not find its beginning
Return the last flower of the house to the dew.
At the end of things we know that we love so as to love … and we break.
.
… And if I could I would proclaim your life by the hour and the minute from birth
Till my attempted suicide around your waist
And I would steal the peppermint of childhood from your steps and the sunrise of your hair.
And if I could I would kill those who traced the butterfly of your knees
And witnessed the evasive partridge over your breast.
And if I could I would be a slave, or a god in your way
And recreate creation so I might be the first wave of your sea
And the first cry of your land
And if I could I would grasp that we are
Fruit on the point of falling from the trees.

Mahmoud Darwish, I Don’t Want This Poem to End. Interlink Books, 2017.
Translated by Mohammad Shaheen.