A Newly Translated Poem By Mahmoud Darwish

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Translated by Barbara Romaine for the new poetry anthology published on November 3, “Mahmoud Darwish: Poems” edited by Hannah Lilith Assadi and Omar Khalifah (Penguin Random House).

This poem, from Mahmoud Darwish’s 1977 collection Aʿras (Weddings), was his response to the events that had taken place a year earlier in Palestinian villages – later commemorated as Land Day. In 1976, the Israeli government announced a plan to confiscate thousands of Palestinian-owned tracts of land near the Galilee, prompting demonstrators and strikes in several villages. The events later turned violent when Israeli forces killed several Palestinian protesters. 

The long poem, of which the last two stanzas are translated below, belongs to Darwish’s Beirut period – a decade-long period in which the poet resided in the Lebanese capital. Marked by emphatic diction and anaphoric repetition, it conveys defiance; as such, this poem is part of “resistance literature,” a subgenre of Palestinian literature that flourished in the three decades following the 1948 Nakba. The final three lines of the poem, in which Darwish repeatedly declares, “You shall not pass,” have been sublimated into a poetic political motto of Palestinian resilience.

Although rooted in a specific historical occasion, the poem, like many of Darwish’s renowned works, transcends its immediate context and reflects the enduring Palestinian attachment to the land. Read in the midst of these despairing and suffocating moments in Gaza and the West Bank, the poem is a powerful reminder of the hope, however meager, that the colonizer shall not pass.

Omar Khalifah

THE LAND POEM

I am hope, easy and expansive—so said the land to

This is the chance of following Khadijah into the

distant years. Not in order to reap me did they

sow me

The wind of Galilee would speak of me, and so it

drowses where Khadijah dwells

The gazelle of Galilee would raze my prison this day,

and so it guards Khadijah’s shade as she tends

her fire

Khadijah! I have seen . . . and have believed my vision.

In its vastness it takes me and in its passion: I am

the lover eternal, the prisoner manifest. Taking

on my viridity, the orange becomes Jaffa’s

fixation

Since I have known Khadijah, I have been the land

Not in order to kill me did they know me

Between my fingers Galilee’s crop may grow, and

sketch this place parceled out between my

striving and the love of Khadijah

This is the chance to advance anew into the distant

years, from the month of March until the wind

departs from the land

This dust is mine

These clouds are mine

This is Khadijah’s brow

I am the lover eternal—the prisoner manifest

Early morning and the fragrance of the land awakens

me . . .

Early evening and my iron fetters awaken her

This is the chance of advancing anew into the distant

years

Those so proceeding ask not as to the span of their

lives

They ask about the land: Is it reborn?

Oh land: my child!

Have they known you only to slaughter you?

And did they shackle you with our dreams, and have

you sunk into our wound in the winter?

Have they known you only to slaughter you?

And did they shackle you with their dreams, and have

you risen up to our dream in the spring?

I am the land . . .

Oh, you who are on your way to the grain in its cradle

Till my body!

You on your way to the mount of fire

Pass over my body

You on your way to the Dome of the Rock Pass

Pass over my body

But you who trample my body

Shall not pass

I am the land embodied

You shall not pass

I am the land in its awakening

You shall not pass

I am the land. Oh, you who trample the land in its

awakening

You shall not pass

You shall not pass

You shall not pass!