Poem: Lost homeland!
Palestinian Poets: Ali El Khalili
El Khalili was born in Nablus in 1943. He graduated in 1966 from the Arab University of Beirut with a degree in Business Administration. He worked as a teacher, a journalist, and editor in chief of newspapers, both in Palestine and in Arab countries; and is now a Director General in the Palestinian ministry of culture. A prolific writer, he is also a short story writer, a novelist, and has published books on Palestinian folklore.
Dialectics of the Homeland
1 . Beyond the rainy cloud, the rose, and the pagan dream
and remnants of the old pledge.
The lovers are no more the lovers
And the murderers are similarly transposed,
O homeland, drowning in mystic symbols and in blood,
Lost homeland!
Teach us to exist in the age of lost things
Teach us to unlock barred doors
To fertilize a barren land
Discover in you the cloud and the rose
Illuminate the tired masses.
Homeland of lost things,
Teach us to conceive trees and children,
When the promised sun and the promised wind
Are concealed or revealed
Teach us that the murderers are visible in you
And the murdered invisible.
2. Glory to the dead, who dispersed among the people
who burned:
-Who ploughs fire?
-They plundered all secrets.
-Now?
Apes huddled around the tended fire.
3. The blocked horizon rained.
Who can dam a river between one finger and another?
Who steals a moon that blossoms at a marriage of simple peasants?
Homeland of the newborn mother,
We have concealed a wound, exposed another
Witnessed blood as water, water as blood,
We did not fall,
Beyond the rainy cloud, the rose, and the pagan dream
bridges extend,
beyond the noose is the lily
green corpses pressed in the books of simple people
and in the memory of the struggling masses.
The peaks of death are torture and the taut tones of the voice
The peaks of death are magnificent, for who can possess
his own death lacerated by
obstructed paths?
4 .They passed at the twilight of revolution of lost things
Who owns the truth of death?
The customary slates are split:
Death without death
Voice without voce
Homeland without homeland.
Only the poor, the workers, the outcasts,
the elect at the dawn of the revolution
remain loyal to the wound, to the truth of death,
to the meaning of the song.
Other links:
Palestinian Intifada Chronology
What is the Intifada ?
Al - Aqsa Intifada
