Each Mahmoud Darwish Day (March 13), share new work by or about Darwish (March 13, 1941 – August 9, 2008), one of the great poets of the twentieth century.
Till My End and Till Its End
By Mahmoud Darwish
Translated by Marilyn Hacker
Are you tired of walking
My son, are you tired?
— Yes, Papa
Your night stretches out on the road
And my heart spills on the earth of your night.
— You’ve always been agile as a cat!
Climb on my shoulders
And we’ll take a shortcut through
The last forest of terebinth and oak
Galilee is to the north of us
And Lebanon behind us
And all the sky is ours from Damascus
To the beautiful walls of Acre
— And after that?
— We’ll go home
Do you know the way, my son?
Yes, Papa
East of the carob tree on the main road
There is a little path hemmed in by cactuses
At first, then it goes to the well
Getting wider and wider, then it leads
To the grapevines of Uncle Jamil
Who sells tobacco and sweets,
Then it loses itself on the threshing floor before
It picks itself up, comes in and sits down in our house
Like a parakeet.
— Do you know our home, my son?
I know it as well as I know the path
Jasmin grows around the iron gate
There are footprints of light on the stone steps
Behind the house a sunflower stares into the distance
And domestic bees prepare Grandfather’s breakfast
On a wicker platter.
In the courtyard, there is a well, a willow and a horse
And one of these tomorrows our pages will be leafed through behind the wall…
Papa, are you tired?
I see drops of sweat in your eyes.
— Yes, my son, I’m tired… Will you carry me?
— Just the way you carried me, Papa
And I’ll carry that tenderness
Until
My beginning and its beginning
And I’ll follow this road until
My end…. And until its end
Mahmoud Darwish was one of the great poets of the twentieth century.
Marilyn Hacker is the author of eighteen books of poems, most recently “Calligraphies” (Norton,2023) , two collaborative books, and twenty-two translations of French and francophone poets including Vénus Khoury-Ghata and Samira Negrouche . She has also translated work by Fadwa Suleiman, Golan Haji, and others from Arabic. “Water to Water,” a collaboration with Deema Shehabi, was published in December by Interlink Press.