May 2020
Nothing Remains
by Fadwa Tuqan the "Poet of Palestine"
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
Tonight, we're together,
but tomorrow you'll be hidden from me again,
thanks to life's cruelty.
The seas will separate us...
Oh! Oh! If only I could see you!
But I'll never know
where your steps led you,
which routes you took,
or to what unknown destinations
your feet were compelled.
You will depart and the thief of hearts,
the denier of beauty,
will rob us of all that's dear to us,
will steal this happiness from us,
leaving our hands empty.
Tomorrow at sunrise you'll vanish like a phantom,
dissipating into a delicate mist
dissolving quickly in the summer sun.
Your scent! Your scent contains the essence of life,
filling my heart
as the earth absorbs the lifegiving rain.
I will miss you like the fragrance of trees
when you leave tomorrow,
and nothing remains.
Just as everything beautiful and all that's dear to us
is lost! Lost, and nothing remains.
Keywords/Tags: Fadwa Tuqan, Palestine, Palestinian, Arabic, translation, nothing, remains, parting, separation, loss
Fadwa Tuqan has been called the Grand Dame of Palestinian letters and The Poet of Palestine. These are my translations of Fadwa Tuqan poems originally written in Arabic.
Enough for Me
by Fadwa Tuqan
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
Enough for me to lie in the earth,
to be buried in her,
to sink meltingly into her fecund soil, to vanish ...
only to spring forth like a flower
brightening the play of my countrymen's children.
Enough for me to remain
in my native soil's embrace,
to be as close as a handful of dirt,
a sprig of grass,
a wildflower.
Published by Palestine Today, Free Journal and Lokesh Tripathi
Existence
by Fadwa Tuqan
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
In my solitary life, I was a lost question;
in the encompassing darkness,
my answer lay concealed.
You were a bright new star
revealed by fate,
radiating light from the fathomless darkness.
The other stars rotated around you
—once, twice—
until I perceived
your unique radiance.
Then the bleak blackness broke
and in the twin tremors
of our entwined hands
I had found my missing answer.
Oh you! Oh you intimate and distant!
Don't you remember the coalescence
Of our spirits in the flames?
Of my universe with yours?
Of the two poets?
Despite our great distance,
Existence unites us.
Published by This Week in Palestine, Arabic Literature (ArabLit.org) and Art-in-Society (Germany)
Labor Pains
by Fadwa Tuqan
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
Tonight the wind wafts pollen through ruined fields and homes.
The earth shivers with love, with the agony of giving birth,
while the Invader spreads stories of submission and surrender.
O, Arab Aurora!
Tell the Usurper: childbirth’s a force beyond his ken
because a mother’s wracked body reveals a rent that inaugurates life,
a crack through which light dawns in an instant
as the blood’s rose blooms in the wound.
Hamza
by Fadwa Tuqan
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
Hamza was one of my hometown’s ordinary men
who did manual labor for bread.
When I saw him recently,
the land still wore its mourning dress in the solemn windless silence
and I felt defeated.
But Hamza-the-unextraordinary said:
“Sister, our land’s throbbing heart never ceases to pound,
and it perseveres, enduring the unendurable, keeping the secrets of mounds and wombs.
This land sprouting cactus spikes and palms also births freedom-fighters.
Thus our land, my sister, is our mother!”
Days passed and Hamza was nowhere to be seen,
but I felt the land’s belly heaving in pain.
At sixty-five Hamza’s a heavy burden on her back.
“Burn down his house!”
some commandant screamed,
“and slap his son in a prison cell!”
As our town’s military ruler later explained
this was necessary for law and order,
that is, an act of love, for peace!
Armed soldiers surrounded Hamza’s house;
the coiled serpent completed its circle.
The bang at his door came with an ultimatum:
“Evacuate, **** it!'
So generous with their time, they said:
“You can have an hour, yes!”
Hamza threw open a window.
Face-to-face with the blazing sun, he yelled defiantly:
“Here in this house I and my children will live and die, for Palestine!”
Hamza's voice echoed over the hemorrhaging silence.
An hour later, with impeccable timing, Hanza’s house came crashing down
as its rooms were blown sky-high and its bricks and mortar burst,
till everything settled, burying a lifetime’s memories of labor, tears, and happier times.
Yesterday I saw Hamza
walking down one of our town’s streets ...
Hamza-the-unextraordinary man who remained as he always was:
unshakable in his determination.
My translation follows one by Azfar Hussain and borrows a word here, a phrase there.
Biography of Fadwa Tuqan (aka Touqan or Toukan)
Fadwa Tuqan (1917-2003), called the "Grande Dame of Palestinian letters," is also known as "The Poet of Palestine." She is generally considered to be one of the very best contemporary Arab poets. Palestine’s national poet, Mahmoud Darwish, named her “the mother of Palestinian poetry.”
Excerpts from "The Dice Player"
by Mahmoud Darwish
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
Who am I to say
the things I say to you?
I am not a stone
burnished to illumination by water ...
Nor am I a reed
riddled by the wind
into a flute ...
No, I'm a dice player:
I win sometimes
and I lose sometimes,
just like you ...
or perhaps a bit less.
I was born beside the water well with the three lonely trees like nuns:
born without any hoopla or a midwife.
I was given my unplanned name by chance,
assigned to my family by chance,
and by chance inherited their features, attributes, habits and illnesses.
First, arterial plaque and hypertension;
second, shyness when addressing my elders;
third, the hope of curing the flu with cups of hot chamomile;
fourth, laziness in describing gazelles and larks;
fifth, lethargy dark winter nights;
sixth, the lack of a singing voice.
I had no hand in my own being;
it was mere coincidence that I popped out male;
mere coincidence that I saw the pale lemon-like moon illuminating sleepless girls
and did not unleash the mole hidden in my private parts.
I might not have existed
had my father not married my mother
by chance.
Or I might have been like my sister
who screamed then died,
only alive an hour
and never knowing who gave her birth.
Or like the doves’ eggs
smashed before her chicks hatched.
Was it mere coincidence
that I was the one left alive in a traffic accident
because I didn’t board the bus ...
because I’d forgotten about life and its routines
while reading the night before
a love story in which I became first the author,
then the lover, then the beloved and love’s martyr ...
then overslept and avoided the accident!
I also played no role in surviving the sea,
because I was a reckless boy,
allured by the magnetic water
calling: Come to me!
No, I only survived the sea
because a human gull rescued me
when he saw the waves pulling me under and paralyzing my hands!
Who am I to say
the things I say to you
outside the church door?
I'm nothing but a dice throw,
a toss between predator and prey.
In my moonlit awareness
I witnessed the massacre
and survived by sheer chance:
I was too small for the enemy to target,
barely bigger than the bee
flitting among the fence’s flowers.
Then I feared for my father and family;
I feared for our time as fragile as glass;
I feared for my pet cat and rabbit;
I feared for a magical moon looming high over the mosque’s minarets;
I feared for our vines’ grapes
dangling like a dog’s udders ...
Then fear walked beside me and I walked with it,
barefoot, forgetting my fragile dreams of what I had wanted for tomorrow
because there was no time for tomorrow.
I was lucky the wolves
departed by chance,
or else escaped from the army.
I also played no role in my own life,
except when Life taught me her recitations.
Are there any more?, I wondered,
then lit my lamps and tried to amend them ...
I might not have been a swallow
had the wind ordained it otherwise ...
The wind is the traveler's fate: his fortune or misfortune.
I flew north, east, west ...
but the south was too harsh, too rebellious for me
because the south is my country.
I became a swallow’s metaphor,
hovering over my life’s debris
from spring to autumn,
baptizing my feathers in the cloud-like lake
then offering my salaams to the undying Nazarene:
undying because God’s spirit lives within him
and God is the prophet’s luck ...
While it is my good fortune to be the Godhead’s neighbor ...
Just as it is my bad fortune the cross
remains our future’s eternal ladder!
Who am I to say
the things I say to you?
Who am I?
I might have not been inspired
because inspiration is the lonely soul’s compensation
and the poem is his dice throw
on an unlit board
that may or may not glow ...
Words fall ...
as feathers fall to earth:
I did not plan this poem.
I only obeyed its rhythm’s demands.
Who am I to say
the things I say to you?
It might not have been me.
I might not have been here to write it.
My plane might have crashed one morning
while I slept till noon
then arrived at the airport too late
to visit Damascus and Cairo,
the Louvre, and other enchanting cities.
Had I been a slow walker, a rifle might have severed my shadow from its cedar.
Had I been a fast walker, I might have disintegrated and vanished like a fleeting whim.
Had I dreamt too much, I might have lost my memories of reality.
I am fortunate to sleep alone
listening to my body's complaints
with my talent for detecting pain,
so that I call the physician ten minutes before death:
dodging death by a mere ten minutes,
continuing life by chance,
disappointing the Void.
But who am I to disappoint the Void?
Who am I?
Who?
Keywords/Tags: Gaza, Palestine, Palestinian, children, mothers, injustice, violence, war, race, racism, intolerance, ethnic cleansing, genocide
by Fadwa Tuqan the "Poet of Palestine"
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
Tonight, we're together,
but tomorrow you'll be hidden from me again,
thanks to life's cruelty.
The seas will separate us...
Oh! Oh! If only I could see you!
But I'll never know
where your steps led you,
which routes you took,
or to what unknown destinations
your feet were compelled.
You will depart and the thief of hearts,
the denier of beauty,
will rob us of all that's dear to us,
will steal this happiness from us,
leaving our hands empty.
Tomorrow at sunrise you'll vanish like a phantom,
dissipating into a delicate mist
dissolving quickly in the summer sun.
Your scent! Your scent contains the essence of life,
filling my heart
as the earth absorbs the lifegiving rain.
I will miss you like the fragrance of trees
when you leave tomorrow,
and nothing remains.
Just as everything beautiful and all that's dear to us
is lost! Lost, and nothing remains.
Keywords/Tags: Fadwa Tuqan, Palestine, Palestinian, Arabic, translation, nothing, remains, parting, separation, loss
Fadwa Tuqan has been called the Grand Dame of Palestinian letters and The Poet of Palestine. These are my translations of Fadwa Tuqan poems originally written in Arabic.
Enough for Me
by Fadwa Tuqan
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
Enough for me to lie in the earth,
to be buried in her,
to sink meltingly into her fecund soil, to vanish ...
only to spring forth like a flower
brightening the play of my countrymen's children.
Enough for me to remain
in my native soil's embrace,
to be as close as a handful of dirt,
a sprig of grass,
a wildflower.
Published by Palestine Today, Free Journal and Lokesh Tripathi
Existence
by Fadwa Tuqan
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
In my solitary life, I was a lost question;
in the encompassing darkness,
my answer lay concealed.
You were a bright new star
revealed by fate,
radiating light from the fathomless darkness.
The other stars rotated around you
—once, twice—
until I perceived
your unique radiance.
Then the bleak blackness broke
and in the twin tremors
of our entwined hands
I had found my missing answer.
Oh you! Oh you intimate and distant!
Don't you remember the coalescence
Of our spirits in the flames?
Of my universe with yours?
Of the two poets?
Despite our great distance,
Existence unites us.
Published by This Week in Palestine, Arabic Literature (ArabLit.org) and Art-in-Society (Germany)
Labor Pains
by Fadwa Tuqan
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
Tonight the wind wafts pollen through ruined fields and homes.
The earth shivers with love, with the agony of giving birth,
while the Invader spreads stories of submission and surrender.
O, Arab Aurora!
Tell the Usurper: childbirth’s a force beyond his ken
because a mother’s wracked body reveals a rent that inaugurates life,
a crack through which light dawns in an instant
as the blood’s rose blooms in the wound.
Hamza
by Fadwa Tuqan
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
Hamza was one of my hometown’s ordinary men
who did manual labor for bread.
When I saw him recently,
the land still wore its mourning dress in the solemn windless silence
and I felt defeated.
But Hamza-the-unextraordinary said:
“Sister, our land’s throbbing heart never ceases to pound,
and it perseveres, enduring the unendurable, keeping the secrets of mounds and wombs.
This land sprouting cactus spikes and palms also births freedom-fighters.
Thus our land, my sister, is our mother!”
Days passed and Hamza was nowhere to be seen,
but I felt the land’s belly heaving in pain.
At sixty-five Hamza’s a heavy burden on her back.
“Burn down his house!”
some commandant screamed,
“and slap his son in a prison cell!”
As our town’s military ruler later explained
this was necessary for law and order,
that is, an act of love, for peace!
Armed soldiers surrounded Hamza’s house;
the coiled serpent completed its circle.
The bang at his door came with an ultimatum:
“Evacuate, **** it!'
So generous with their time, they said:
“You can have an hour, yes!”
Hamza threw open a window.
Face-to-face with the blazing sun, he yelled defiantly:
“Here in this house I and my children will live and die, for Palestine!”
Hamza's voice echoed over the hemorrhaging silence.
An hour later, with impeccable timing, Hanza’s house came crashing down
as its rooms were blown sky-high and its bricks and mortar burst,
till everything settled, burying a lifetime’s memories of labor, tears, and happier times.
Yesterday I saw Hamza
walking down one of our town’s streets ...
Hamza-the-unextraordinary man who remained as he always was:
unshakable in his determination.
My translation follows one by Azfar Hussain and borrows a word here, a phrase there.
Biography of Fadwa Tuqan (aka Touqan or Toukan)
Fadwa Tuqan (1917-2003), called the "Grande Dame of Palestinian letters," is also known as "The Poet of Palestine." She is generally considered to be one of the very best contemporary Arab poets. Palestine’s national poet, Mahmoud Darwish, named her “the mother of Palestinian poetry.”
Excerpts from "The Dice Player"
by Mahmoud Darwish
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
Who am I to say
the things I say to you?
I am not a stone
burnished to illumination by water ...
Nor am I a reed
riddled by the wind
into a flute ...
No, I'm a dice player:
I win sometimes
and I lose sometimes,
just like you ...
or perhaps a bit less.
I was born beside the water well with the three lonely trees like nuns:
born without any hoopla or a midwife.
I was given my unplanned name by chance,
assigned to my family by chance,
and by chance inherited their features, attributes, habits and illnesses.
First, arterial plaque and hypertension;
second, shyness when addressing my elders;
third, the hope of curing the flu with cups of hot chamomile;
fourth, laziness in describing gazelles and larks;
fifth, lethargy dark winter nights;
sixth, the lack of a singing voice.
I had no hand in my own being;
it was mere coincidence that I popped out male;
mere coincidence that I saw the pale lemon-like moon illuminating sleepless girls
and did not unleash the mole hidden in my private parts.
I might not have existed
had my father not married my mother
by chance.
Or I might have been like my sister
who screamed then died,
only alive an hour
and never knowing who gave her birth.
Or like the doves’ eggs
smashed before her chicks hatched.
Was it mere coincidence
that I was the one left alive in a traffic accident
because I didn’t board the bus ...
because I’d forgotten about life and its routines
while reading the night before
a love story in which I became first the author,
then the lover, then the beloved and love’s martyr ...
then overslept and avoided the accident!
I also played no role in surviving the sea,
because I was a reckless boy,
allured by the magnetic water
calling: Come to me!
No, I only survived the sea
because a human gull rescued me
when he saw the waves pulling me under and paralyzing my hands!
Who am I to say
the things I say to you
outside the church door?
I'm nothing but a dice throw,
a toss between predator and prey.
In my moonlit awareness
I witnessed the massacre
and survived by sheer chance:
I was too small for the enemy to target,
barely bigger than the bee
flitting among the fence’s flowers.
Then I feared for my father and family;
I feared for our time as fragile as glass;
I feared for my pet cat and rabbit;
I feared for a magical moon looming high over the mosque’s minarets;
I feared for our vines’ grapes
dangling like a dog’s udders ...
Then fear walked beside me and I walked with it,
barefoot, forgetting my fragile dreams of what I had wanted for tomorrow
because there was no time for tomorrow.
I was lucky the wolves
departed by chance,
or else escaped from the army.
I also played no role in my own life,
except when Life taught me her recitations.
Are there any more?, I wondered,
then lit my lamps and tried to amend them ...
I might not have been a swallow
had the wind ordained it otherwise ...
The wind is the traveler's fate: his fortune or misfortune.
I flew north, east, west ...
but the south was too harsh, too rebellious for me
because the south is my country.
I became a swallow’s metaphor,
hovering over my life’s debris
from spring to autumn,
baptizing my feathers in the cloud-like lake
then offering my salaams to the undying Nazarene:
undying because God’s spirit lives within him
and God is the prophet’s luck ...
While it is my good fortune to be the Godhead’s neighbor ...
Just as it is my bad fortune the cross
remains our future’s eternal ladder!
Who am I to say
the things I say to you?
Who am I?
I might have not been inspired
because inspiration is the lonely soul’s compensation
and the poem is his dice throw
on an unlit board
that may or may not glow ...
Words fall ...
as feathers fall to earth:
I did not plan this poem.
I only obeyed its rhythm’s demands.
Who am I to say
the things I say to you?
It might not have been me.
I might not have been here to write it.
My plane might have crashed one morning
while I slept till noon
then arrived at the airport too late
to visit Damascus and Cairo,
the Louvre, and other enchanting cities.
Had I been a slow walker, a rifle might have severed my shadow from its cedar.
Had I been a fast walker, I might have disintegrated and vanished like a fleeting whim.
Had I dreamt too much, I might have lost my memories of reality.
I am fortunate to sleep alone
listening to my body's complaints
with my talent for detecting pain,
so that I call the physician ten minutes before death:
dodging death by a mere ten minutes,
continuing life by chance,
disappointing the Void.
But who am I to disappoint the Void?
Who am I?
Who?
Keywords/Tags: Gaza, Palestine, Palestinian, children, mothers, injustice, violence, war, race, racism, intolerance, ethnic cleansing, genocide
