“Those Who Pass Between Fleeting Words” by Mahmoud Darwish

Amanda Holmes reads Mahmoud Darwish’s poem “Those Who Pass Between Fleeting Words,” translated especially for this podcast by Carolyn Forché. Have a suggestion for a poem by a (dead) writer? Email us: podcast@theamericanscholar.org. If we select your entry, you’ll win a copy of a poetry collection edited by David Lehman.

This episode was produced by Stephanie Bastek and features the song “Canvasback” by Chad Crouch

Those Who Pass Between Fleeting Words
by Mahmoud Darwish, originally published in The Jerusalem Post and newly translated by Carolyn Forché

Those who pass between fleeting words
Take your names with you and go
Rid our time of your hours, and go
Steal what you will from the sea’s blueness and the sands of memory
Take what pictures you want so as to understand
That which you never will:
How a stone from our land becomes the ceiling of our sky

Those who pass between fleeting words
From you the sword—from us blood
From you steel and fire—from us our flesh
From you yet another tank—from us stones
From you tear gas—from us the rain
Above us, as above you, are sky and air
So take your share of our blood—and go
Go to a party and dance—but go
As for us, we must water the flowers of the dead
As for us, we must live as we wish.

Those who pass between fleeting words
As acrid dust, go where you wish, but
Don’t pass between us like locusts
For we have work to do on our land:
We have wheat to grow, watered with our sweat
We have here that which doesn’t please you:
Stones or partridges
So take the past, if you wish, to the market for antiquities
And return the bones to the hoopoe on a clay platter
If you wish.
What we have doesn’t please you: we have the future
And we have things to do on our land.
Those who pass between fleeting words
Toss your illusions in a forgotten pit and be gone
Return the hand of time to the law of the golden calf
Or to the music of gunfire!
What we have doesn’t please you here so go
We have what you don’t: the bleeding homeland of a bleeding people
A homeland ready for oblivion or memory
Those who pass between fleeting words
It is time for you to go
Live wherever you like, but don’t live among us
Die wherever you like, but don’t die among us
We have work to do on our land.

Here we have the past
We have the first cry of life
we have the present and the future
Here we have this world, and here also the hereafter
So leave our country
Our land, our sea
Our wheat, our salt, our wounds
Everything, and leave
The memories of memory
Those who pass between fleeting words!