Saturday Poem

The Horse Fell off the Poem

The horse fell off the poem
and the Galilean women were wet
with butterflies and dew,
dancing above chrysanthemum

The two absent ones: you and I
you and I are the two absent ones
.
A pair of white doves
chatting on the branches of a holm oak
.
No love, but I love ancient
love poems that guard
the sick moon from smoke
.
I attack and retreat, like the violin in quatrains
I get far from my time when I am near
the topography of place
There is no margin in modern language left
to celebrate what we love,
because all that will be … was
.
The horse fell bloodied
with my poem
and I fell bloodied
with the horse’s blood …
.

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by Mahmoud Darwish
from The Butterfly’s Burden
Copper Canyon Press,
translated by Fady Joudah