Why Did You Leave the Horse Alone?

by Darwish, Mahmoud; Sacks, Jeffrey

• ISBN13: 9780976395010
• ISBN10: 0976395010
• Edition: Bilingual
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2006-04-12
• Publisher: Archipelago

Summary

At once an intimate autobiography and a collective memory of the Palestinian people, Mahmoud Darwish's interlinked poems are collective cries, songs, and glimpses of the human condition. The collection-widely considered his chef-d'oeuvre-is a poetry of myth and history, of exile and suspended time, of an identity bound to the Arabic language and his displaced people. Darwish's poems-specific and symbolic, simple and profound-are historical glimpses, existential queries, chants of pain and injustice of a people separated from their land.

Author Biography

Mahmoud Darwish (1941–2008) was born in the village of al-Birwa, in the Galilee, Palestine. He became a refugee at age seven. He worked as a journalist and editor in Haifa and left to study in Moscow in 1970. His exilic journey took him to Cairo, Beirut, Tunis, Paris, Amman, and Ramallah, where he settled in 1995. He is one of the most celebrated and revered poets in the Arab world. He published more than thirty books, and his poetry has been translated into thirty-five languages. Darwish was named a Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters by France in 1993, was awarded the Lannan Cultural Freedom Prize in 2001, the Prince Claus Awardin 2004, and the Cairo Prize for Arabic Poetry in 2007. Jeffrey Sacks is a writer, translator, and scholar living in New York City. He teaches Arabic at Columbia University and is completing a book on Arabic and Arab Jewish literature, Opening Figures: Acts of Mourning in Modern Arabic Letters.

Table of Contents

I See my Ghost Coming from a Distance	p. 2
Icons of the Place's Crystal
A Cloud in my Hand	p. 10
Innocent Villagers	p. 16
The Owl's Night	p. 22
The Eternity of Cactus	p. 28
How Many Times Will it be Over	p. 32
To My End and to Its End	p. 36
Abel's Space
Ismael's 'Oud	p. 42
Strangers' Walk	p. 48
The Raven's Ink	p. 54
The Tatar's Swallows	p. 60
The Train Passed	p. 66
Chaos at Resurrection's Gate
The Well	p. 74
Like the Nun in Surat al-Rahman	p. 78
Huriyya's Teachings	p. 82
Ivory Comb	p. 88
The Phases of Anat	p. 94
The Death of the Phoenix	p. 100
A Room to Talk to Oneself
Poetic Arrangements	p. 108
From the Byzantine Odes of Abu Firas al-Hamdani	p. 114
From One Sky to Another, Dreamers Pass	p. 118
One Traveler Said to Another: We Won't Return As	p. 124
A Rhyme for the Odes	p. 130
The Sparrow, as it is	p. 136
Rain on the Church Tower
Helen, What a Rain	p. 142
Night Overflowing the Body	p. 148
To the Gypsy, a Well-tuned Sky	p. 152
First Lessons on a Spanish Guitar	p. 158
The Seven Days of Love	p. 164
The Curtain Falls
Bertolt Brecht's Testimony before a Military Court	p. 174
A Non-linguistic Dispute with Imru' al-Qays	p. 180
Sequences for Another Time	p. 186
... As He Draws Away	p. 192
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