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In Memory of Mahmoud Darwish
by Manash Bhattacharjee
Mahmoud Darwish, portrait by Palestinian artist, Ismail Shammout (1971).I learnt from your poems howTo wait upon deathAnd how waiting is a game asTreacherous as death.I learnt from you how the rootOf waiting is grasped in despairAnd that there is no despairMore deceitful than hope.Waiting helped you gather thoseRoses along the wayWhich grow only for travellersWho walk the loneliest road.You kept those roses as mementosOf your nights when gunshotsWould remind you of the difficultyTo make love under the moon.As you carried the landscape onYour shoulders and lookedFor your address in the cloudsThe enemy laughed.They thought you will grow wearyFrom repeating the same lines of lossBut they didn’t know those without a homeAre always hungry for memory.
Manash Bhattacharjee is a poet and scholar living in New Delhi.
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