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The Dice Player (Excerpts) Mahmoud Darwish - Palestine Translated by Sayed Gouda - Egypt / Hong Kong
Who am I to say to you What I say to you? I’m not a stone Polished by water To become a face Nor am I a stick of cane With holes made by the wind To become a flute …. I’m a dice player I win sometimes I lose sometimes I’m like you Or a little bit less than you I was born beside the well Beside the three lonely trees As lonely as nuns I was born with no celebration or midwife I was given my name just by chance I belonged to a family By chance I inherited their features, habits, And sickness.
I could have not existed My father could have not married my mother By chance I could have been like my sister Who screamed and died Not knowing That she had lived only one hour Not knowing who gave her birth.
Who am I to say to you What I say to you At the door of the church? I’m nothing but a dice throw Between predator and prey I gained more awareness Not to be happy with my moonlit night But to witness the massacre I survived by chance: I was smaller than a military target And bigger than a bee Flying among the flowers over the fence I worried a lot about my brothers and my father I worried about a time made of glass I worried about my cat and my rabbit About a charming moon over the high minaret of the mosque.
I could have not been a swallow If the wind had wished it so The wind is the traveller’s luck I went north, east, west But the south was too hard for me Too far from me Because the south is my country I became a metaphor of a swallow Floating over my debris In the spring, in the autumn Baptizing my feathers with the clouds of the lake Prolonging my greeting Unto the Nassiri who never dies Because in him is the spirit of God And God is the prophets’ luck It is my fortune that I am the neighbor of Godhead …. It is my misfortune that the cross Is the eternal ladder to our tomorrow! Who am I to say to you What I say to you Who am I? I could have not been inspired Inspiration is the luck of the lonely souls “The poem is a dice throw” On a board of darkness That may or may not glow Words fall Like feathers on the sand I did not plan the poem I only obeyed its rhythm
To life I say: slow down, wait for me Till in my cup drunkenness has dried There are flowers in the garden, flowers to all The air cannot escape the flower Wait for me So that the nightingales don’t escape me And I don’t break the rhythm The singers stretch the cords of their lutes in the square Ready for the song of farewell Slow down Long live life!
It is the traveller’s luck that hope Is the twin of despair Or its spontaneous poetry When the sky looks grey And I see a flower appear all of a sudden From the cracks of a wall I don’t say: the sky is grey I contemplate the flower And say: What a day! To two of my friends I say At the gate of night: If we have to dream Let it be like us, simple Like: we have a dinner together after two days The three of us Celebrating the truth of the prophecy in our dream That none of the three of us is lost For the last two days Let us celebrate the sonata of the moon And the kindness of death saw us together, happy And so it lowered its gaze! I don’t say: life farther away is real With places of fantasy But I say: life here is possible And by chance, the land became a holy land Not because its lakes, its heights, its trees Are similar to the gardens in Heaven But because there was a prophet who walked there And prayed on a rock and it cried And the mountain fell in fear of God, Unconscious And by chance the hill slopes of a country Became a museum of nonsense Because thousands of soldiers died there From both sides in defence of the two killers Who said: Go! And they waited for the spoils in two silky tents on both sides – How often soldiers die without knowing until now Who was the victorious one! And by chance some storytellers lived and said: If the others beat the others Our human history would have different headlines O green land, O apple - ‘I love you when you are green’ Moving in a wave of light and water, green Your night is green Your dawn is green Plant me tenderly … Like the tenderness of a mother’s hand In a handful of air I’m one of your seeds, green This poem is not written by one poet It could have not been lyrical Who am I to say to you What I say to you? I could have not been me I could have not been here My plane could have crashed In the morning It is my fortune that I sleep till mid-day So I went to the airport late I could have not seen Lebanon and Cairo The Louvre and the enchanting cities If I was one to walk slowly, my shadow could have been cut from the wakeful cedar by a bullet If I was one to walk fast, I could have been torn into pieces To become a fleeting thought If I was one to dream too much, I could have lost my memory. It is my fortune that I sleep alone So that I listen to the voice of my body And believe my talent in discovering pain And call the physician Ten minutes before I die Ten minutes, enough to live, by chance And disappoint the void Who am I to disappoint the void? Who am I? Who am I?
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