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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Mahmoud Darwish
considered Palestine's most eminent poet, Mahmoud Darwish has published approximately thirty poetry and prose collections and has been translated into more than twenty-two languages...
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I Belong There  
by Mahmoud Darwish
Translated by Carolyn Forché and Munir Akash

I belong there. I have many memories. I was born as everyone is born.

I have a mother, a house with many windows, brothers, friends, and a prison cell
with a chilly window! I have a wave snatched by seagulls, a panorama of my own.
I have a saturated meadow. In the deep horizon of my word, I have a moon,
a bird's sustenance, and an immortal olive tree.
I have lived on the land long before swords turned man into prey.
I belong there. When heaven mourns for her mother, I return heaven to
her mother.
And I cry so that a returning cloud might carry my tears.
To break the rules, I have learned all the words needed for a trial by blood.
I have learned and dismantled all the words in order to draw from them a
single word: Home.



From Unfortunately, It Was Paradise by Mahmoud Darwish translated and Edited by Munir Akash and Carolyn Forché with Sinan Antoon and Amira El-Zein. Copyright © 2003 by the Regents of the University of California. Reprinted by permission of the University of California Press. All rights reserved.
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