Hamza (Excerpt)
Hamza was just an ordinary man
like others in my hometown
who work only with their hands for bread.
When I met him the other day,
this land was wearing a cloak of mourning
in windless silence. And I felt defeated.
But Hamza-the-ordinary said:
‘My sister, our land has a throbbing heart,
it doesn't cease to beat, and it endures
the unendurable. It keeps the secrets
of hills and wombs. This land sprouting
with spikes and palms is also the land
that gives birth to a freedom-fighter.
This land, my sister, is a woman.'
. . .
Labor Pains (Excerpt)
The wind blows the pollen in the night
through ruins of fields and homes.
Earth shivers with love,
with the pain of giving birth,
but the conqueror wants us to believe
stories of submission and surrender.
O Arab Aurora!
Tell the usurper of our land
. . .
The Deluge And The Tree (Excerpt)
When the hurricane swirled and spread its deluge
of dark evil
onto the good green land
'they' gloated. The western skies
reverberated with joyous accounts:
'The Tree has fallen !
The great trunk is smashed! The hurricane leaves no life in the Tree!'
Had the Tree really fallen?
Never! Not with our red streams flowing forever,
not while the wine of our thorn limbs
. . .
- Fadwa Tuqan
