P U L S E

by Manash Bhattacharjee 

I learnt from your poems how

To wait upon death

And how waiting is a game as

Treacherous as death.

 

I learnt from you how the root

Of waiting is grasped in despair

And that there is no despair

More deceitful than hope.

 

Waiting helped you gather those

Roses along the way

Which grow only for travellers

Who walk the loneliest road.

 

You kept those roses as mementos

Of your nights when gunshots

Would remind you of the difficulty

To make love under the moon.

 

As you carried the landscape on

Your shoulders and looked

For your address in the clouds

The enemy laughed.

 

They thought you will grow weary

From repeating the same lines of loss

But they didn’t know those without a home

Are always hungry for memory. 

Manash Bhattacharjee is a poet and scholar living in New Delhi.

Tagged: Mahmoud Darwish, Manash Bhattacharjee

§ One Response to In Memory of Mahmoud Darwish

• Today in Palestine! says:

  December 14, 2012 at 7:35 am

  [...] In Memory of Mahmoud Darwish by Manash Bhattacharjee I learnt from your poems how To wait upon death And how waiting is a game as Treacherous as death. I learnt from you how the root Of waiting is grasped in despair And that there is no despair More deceitful than hope. link to pulsemedia.org Weir criticizes lack of diversity in NYT’s Jerusalem appointments, Philip Weiss A couple years ago I did a post lamenting the fact that so many of the folks covering Israel and Palestine for American papers were Jewish, and some critics accused me of anti-Semitism. Well the issue doesn’t go away. Below are two responses to the hiring of Judi Rudoren as the next New York Times bureau chief in Jerusalem that fasten on to her Jewishness from different points of view.link to mondoweiss.net [...]

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