From Mahmood Darwish's Edward Said homage, seems pertinent to many nowadays

These are excerpts from a translation I did for the poem (full poem in my translations page on the right)

...

“And what of identity?”

“Nothing but self-defense

Identity is the child of birth

Yet, in the end, is the creativity

Of our own self

There is no inheritance of a past

I am the manifold

Within, is my ever renewing without

But I still belong to the victim’s question

Had I not been from there,

I would have trained my heart to raise,

-over there

The deer of metaphor

So carry your homeland

Wherever you may go-

And be a narcissist if you must!”

....

He loves a land and leaves it behind

“Neither he, nor I

But a reader wondering

What poetry might say amidst catastrophe

Blood

and Blood

and Blood

in your Homeland

In my name, in your name,

In the almond flower, in a banana’s peel

In an enfant’s milk

In light and in shadow

In the grain of wheat, in the salt jar/

Skilled snipers who always hit their target

Blood

And Blood

And Blood

This land is too small

for the blood of its children

Who stand as offering at the doorsteps of resurrection

Is this land truly blessed or is it anointed

With Blood

And Blood

And Blood

Neither sand nor prayer can dry this blood

Justice in the pages of the holy book

Isn’t enough for the martyrs

To enjoy the liberty of walking atop the clouds.

Blood in the day,

Blood in the dark

Blood in the words

He says: The poem may play host to defeat,

A ray of light glittering in the heart of a Guitar

A messiah on a horse wounded

by the beauty of metaphor.

The beautiful is nothing but the presence

Of reality in the form!