Free A River Dies of Thirst by Mahmoud Darwish Catherine Cobham Page B
Authors: Mahmoud Darwish Catherine Cobham
predicate is left to a swaggering improvisation, backed up by a Quranic verse taken out of context, or a line of poetry composed in praise of an Umayyad prince, whom the orator thinks was an Abbasid, which earns a round of applause. Applause is what he is aiming for, and in the course of it he retrieves the next lot of non-ideas from the scene before him, and smiles as if rewarding his audience for their faith in their own intelligence, acquired from his excessive intelligence, and makes a silly joke, and they laugh and he laughs. Oratory is the act of inciting discontent against discontent, employing the rhetoric of complaint about the risks posed to the nation by discontent. The orator removes his coat to indicate to the audience the location of his active conscience, puts his hand in his trouser pocket searching for an idea and moves to the right and the leftbecause he is uncertain where the people’s affiliations lie. So whether they are on the right or the left, they will trust him. Then he returns to the middle ground and continues to repeat the phrase: Trust me! Oratory is supremely capable of raising lies to the level of rapturous music. In oratory, truthfulness is a slip of the tongue.
Half and half
You live by halves
You are not you, or
someone else
Where is ‘I’ in the darkness of resemblance?
As if I am a ghost
walking towards a ghost
when all I am is a person who has walked past the ghost
I emerged from my first image
to catch up with the ghost
and it shouted as it disappeared:
‘Watch out, my other self!’
I think
I think
and there is no crime in what I think
and no delusion
that I
with a thread of silk can cut through iron
that I
with a thread of wool
can build tents in remote places
and escape from them
and from me
because I . . . as if I!
The second line
The first line is a gift to talent from the invisible world. But the second line might be poetry or it might be Frost’s disappointment. The second line is the battle of the known and the unknown, when the roads are empty of signs and the possible is full of contradictions, for everything possible is possible, and the second line is the uncertainty of the creature imitating the creator. Does a word guide its speaker or the speaker the word? The second line is not a gift, rather it is constructed by a skilful taming of the unseen, for you see and do not see because the light is so mixed up with the darkness. You are the one to whom inspiration has given the starting signal, and then it abandons you to carry on alone without a compass. You are like someone setting off into a forest without knowing what awaits you: an ambush, a shot, a bolt of lightning, or a woman asking you the time. You say to her: ‘Time has stopped, so you may pass by’ (Pessoa). The possible is a forest, so which tree trunk will you rest your imagination on and which wild beast will you escape from? If you find your way to the second line in the labyrinth of the possible, then you will know the easy route to an appointment with the impossible.
Higher and further
Moist is the sea air
sweet the song of a bird at the window
This was all that remained of the words of the dream
when I woke up at dawn, I said:
‘Perhaps my innocent unconscious favours the rhythm
when it says to me:
“Moist is the sea air
sweet the song of a bird at the window”’
But my consciousness was guiding the meaning towards the rhythm
(or vice versa)
when it said to me:
‘It’s hard to climb the hill, so climb
higher and further.’
The canary
Close to what will be
we listened to the canary’s words
to me and you:
‘Singing in a cage is possible
and so is happiness’
The canary when it sings
brings closer what will be
Tomorrow you will look at today-yesterday
You will say: ‘It was beautiful
and did not last long’
and you will be neither happy nor sad
Tomorrow, we will remember that we left the canary
in a cage, alone
not singing to us
but to passing
Half and half
You live by halves
You are not you, or
someone else
Where is ‘I’ in the darkness of resemblance?
As if I am a ghost
walking towards a ghost
when all I am is a person who has walked past the ghost
I emerged from my first image
to catch up with the ghost
and it shouted as it disappeared:
‘Watch out, my other self!’
I think
I think
and there is no crime in what I think
and no delusion
that I
with a thread of silk can cut through iron
that I
with a thread of wool
can build tents in remote places
and escape from them
and from me
because I . . . as if I!
The second line
The first line is a gift to talent from the invisible world. But the second line might be poetry or it might be Frost’s disappointment. The second line is the battle of the known and the unknown, when the roads are empty of signs and the possible is full of contradictions, for everything possible is possible, and the second line is the uncertainty of the creature imitating the creator. Does a word guide its speaker or the speaker the word? The second line is not a gift, rather it is constructed by a skilful taming of the unseen, for you see and do not see because the light is so mixed up with the darkness. You are the one to whom inspiration has given the starting signal, and then it abandons you to carry on alone without a compass. You are like someone setting off into a forest without knowing what awaits you: an ambush, a shot, a bolt of lightning, or a woman asking you the time. You say to her: ‘Time has stopped, so you may pass by’ (Pessoa). The possible is a forest, so which tree trunk will you rest your imagination on and which wild beast will you escape from? If you find your way to the second line in the labyrinth of the possible, then you will know the easy route to an appointment with the impossible.
Higher and further
Moist is the sea air
sweet the song of a bird at the window
This was all that remained of the words of the dream
when I woke up at dawn, I said:
‘Perhaps my innocent unconscious favours the rhythm
when it says to me:
“Moist is the sea air
sweet the song of a bird at the window”’
But my consciousness was guiding the meaning towards the rhythm
(or vice versa)
when it said to me:
‘It’s hard to climb the hill, so climb
higher and further.’
The canary
Close to what will be
we listened to the canary’s words
to me and you:
‘Singing in a cage is possible
and so is happiness’
The canary when it sings
brings closer what will be
Tomorrow you will look at today-yesterday
You will say: ‘It was beautiful
and did not last long’
and you will be neither happy nor sad
Tomorrow, we will remember that we left the canary
in a cage, alone
not singing to us
but to passing