In every tribe and culture, a wedding is cause for a celebration. And all of those celebrations involve some degree of negotiation among the couple, their families, their cultures and their traditions to make the experience meaningful and powerful for everyone.

Rabbi Adam Greenwald, director of the Miller Introduction to Judaism program at American Jewish University, said when it comes to Jewish nuptials, even born-Jews will have differences. Is one a secular Zionist and the other Modern Orthodox? Reform and Conservadox? The combinations seem endless.

But, for Jews by Choice, there is the added wrinkle of following Jewish practice while making sure beloved non-Jewish family and friends feel included.

When Jazmine Green, who went through the Miller program, and Jeremy Aluma started planning their Jewish wedding, Jazmine’s Catholic mother revealed that she had always dreamed of watching Jazmine’s father walk their daughter down the aisle. The Jewish practice of having both the bride’s parents walk her to the chuppah and remain there with the groom and his family throughout the ceremony was unfamiliar and she resisted it.

Greenwald, who each year officiates at the weddings of 15 to 20 couples in which one person is a Jew by Choice, often meets with non-Jewish families early in the preparation process to talk through these issues and answer questions. He recognizes that, for some parents, there is real sadness when a child chooses a different faith.

“I try to honor those complex emotions and assure them I only want to help create a special, meaningful day for everyone,” he said.

He suggests couples create booklets to explain Jewish terms for attendees who may not be familiar with them and that they make sure the officiating rabbi offers a few sentences of context before each stage of the wedding. These can range from a word about the Sheva Brachot, or Seven Blessings, to explaining to a Christian family that a traditional ketubah is written in Aramaic, the language spoken during the time of Jesus, as Rabbi Anne Brener, professor at the Academy for Jewish Religion, California, has done.

Of course, the wedding itself is not a classroom. Jazmine and Jeremy Aluma kept their printed program informal and friendly with questions such as, “What’s up with the circling?” Their explanation of the ketubah concluded, “It also puts a monetary value on Jazmine’s head so she can hold it over Jeremy for the rest of their lives.” About the glass-smashing, they wrote, “If you’re a Jew, you know that as a people, we’ve overcome adversity and make up a thriving global community. Being torn apart encourages us to grow and gives us the opportunity to come back stronger and more resilient than before. We break a glass as a symbol of this natural process.”

Des Khoury, another student of Greenwald’s, and Moshe Netter found a way to recognize many of their families’ traditions in their ceremony and afterward. They were married by Moshe’s father, Rabbi Perry Netter, who explained to the guests that the chuppah, which symbolized the house Des and Moshe were creating, was open on all sides to indicate that everyone was welcome.

Des is a first-generation American. Her father is Lebanese-Egyptian and her mother Armenian; her family’s faith tradition is Catholic. Her wedding program included ways to express congratulations in Hebrew, English, French, Arabic and Armenian. And after the ceremony, Des and Moshe emerged from yichud, or their moment alone, to the horah, followed by an Armenian song and folk dance, and then an Arabic tune. By that time, she said, everyone was dancing.

The material of the chuppah itself can be inclusive. Brener said she once officiated at a wedding beneath traditional Ecuadorian fabric brought to Los Angeles by the groom’s Catholic family.

Music, explanations and words of welcome are nice, but when it comes to actual participation by non-Jews, every officiating rabbi will have his or her own halachic opinion. Because the marriage liturgy itself can be completed in about 10 minutes, many feel there’s room to add appropriate ritual. The mothers of Des and Moshe, for example, lit a unity candle under their children’s chuppah.

Jessica Emerson McCormick, who was born into a Jewish family, researched clan tartans before her marriage to Patrick McCormick, whose Catholic family is Scotch-Irish. Jessica and her mother found a festive blue, red and yellow pattern, and had it woven into a length of cloth and made into a custom tallit for Patrick, as well as special kippot for him and his father to wear at the wedding.

Along with that plaid tallit, Jessica and Patrick’s ceremony included several rabbi friends reading the traditional Seven Blessings in Hebrew, followed by members of Patrick’s family reading English translations. Both of Jessica’s children from a previous marriage were on the bimah, and her son wrote and read his own interpretation of the seventh blessing.

Rabbi Susan Goldberg at Wilshire Boulevard Temple said having non-Jews read translations of the Sheva Brachot is “a nice way to include friends and family in the ceremony.”

Because all translation is a kind of interpretation, Greenwald said he also approves of participants riffing on the basic idea of a blessing to create something that especially speaks to the couple. He finds that the needs of the couple can get lost while they’re making sure everyone else is happy, and sees one of his jobs as helping them stay focused on what they need, how they can be kind and compassionate, but still have the wedding they desire.

“The most important thing,” he said, “is that the couple under the chuppah have a powerful, meaningful experience of commitment.”

Because the wedding day marks a transition to what Jewish tradition sees as a new life, many rabbis encourage couples to go to the mikveh before the ceremony. Often for Jews by Choice, it’s their first visit since their conversion and a chance to reflect on how much has changed since then.

It wasn’t clear at first that Patrick would choose to become Jewish. When he did decide, Jessica said, his family was supportive. Like the families of the other Jews by Choice interviewed for this article, his parents were happy that he had chosen to include religion in his life.

Des, who said she spent years searching for a spiritual practice that felt right to her, also found her parents accepting. “To them, it’s all prayer and God. They’ve even started looking forward to invitations to Shabbat dinner.”

Jazmine’s mother, too, witnessed her daughter’s spiritual seeking and was glad that she found a place that felt like home. In recognition of that, she even gave up her front-row seat and walked with her husband and daughter to take her place under the unfamiliar chuppah.

The officiating rabbi, Ari Lucas of Temple Beth Am, spoke to Jazmine and Jeremy about coming together with the support of their community. He reminded the guests that they were there not just to witness. Together, this mix of family and friends, cultures, languages and traditions would help — and go on helping — the couple begin their new life together.

read more:www.marieaustralia.com/formal-dresses

www.marieaustralia.com/evening-dresses

Were on  568 a. C., a gentleman who was passing by Magdala tower met and fell from his horse, he approached one of the famous Canaanite, children of Migdal and Afad. One said his name Sherom and other Moshe. The gentleman asked them to tell you about the story of a tower and supernatural properties. Sherom and Moshe smiled, beginning to narrate the popular version ...:

Sherom speaks ..."Once upon a time a tower that had many steps that anyone who enter feel one dizzying air, and would never come up to his last cell; it seemed the very wall of china endless wanting to arrive. She was jealous all night passers Magdala, ancient city of Palestine; Well, she was so high that resembled a tree to be an ant, and why the song that emanates from his high-rise building always orientated sweets steps that fear capsize and fall into the hands of an evil villain.

They flee ye fearful, as the ant when I looked at the tower, thought he walked toward her and so hurried his steps. Miriam was not the case, every night had to work through the dark alleys like hammers on the stones of a mysterious sculptor; strong sounded by the Siroco. Her walking with her soft feet, synchronized with the hammer sirocco, so it would be easy prey, --- At the moment, Hurián distracted a wild ... birds, --- and then continues Moshe ... :
Moshe ...: The mayor watched from near the tower, trying to figure out ... What did or hiding the backwater of her eyebrows ...? . And so, everyone would wonder that observe something similar....

still a sad day his father dies and is subject to funeral expenses, which luckily managed Míriam; every night emancipating the thirst of caravanners coming on route from Syria to the tavern Kvish Gadol. Here, they were giving their friends the final toast to his leg, then close the business and incorporated into the gutter furnaces buried lands. That same afternoon, before the massive help of their neighbors, basked crack open the stalled Afad time with smiles cover its arid cot and abandoned.

Nor they spent more than three days, when Míriam Rishon Lezion part in convoy, carrying by destination the sea. Sada stayed home Elijah; the spouse of his sister Hiram. The Mediterranean Sea front blew his hair; brown them stuck to your skin as auguring stay long.

Your face and his skin seemed toasted desert landscapes, which were mixed with the air and water. Back his rueful survive in Magdala; now by the time spring glistening in majestic glory stay near the coast. Jamal sleep at home, and then give their rich fruits contacts to work and pay the caravaneer Jamal, for their generous service.
Sherom stutters to continue, relax and continuous..:
Sherom ..: A cloudy afternoon when she walked down the beach, she found the dress of a man, she then watched a bather distinguished between horizontal nebulae waters. He descended from the sparkling water blocking the sun with his back, leaving some summer rays eyes walk the circular craters Míriam. She bent her back to her face left free, so you could see some sadness Jofat large tonnage carried her back...

Jofat ...How many times I'll see, if only today I just...?
Míriam grabs a branch of soil and writes ... Magdala...
Jofat ..: Hence you come!
Miriam..: This is what you see ...!
Jofat..: From the high tower, architecture brilliants eyes and sovereign Semitic structure ...

He took some water and washed his hands of Miriam, she tight her throat and muttered short sentences from a song of the earth; the sun suspended in the air kept the closest shade to protect the Migdal in your heart with its long silhouette, and sleeping in her skirt pocket. And so steep on his feet shackled with Jofat sea could be seen on certain days of the month, some of them not greet, but the events of each light would smoothness to the ways of Rishon le Zion.

Miriam worked hard so that one day could return. Luck was for Jamal, since their trade with Syria, Egypt and Persia as plenty of fortune, even Miriam, as a reward for their effectiveness powdered received from his hands, a radiant psaltery; which would occupy the glazing bars rubbing singing, as if he were to do with laggard itinerant sheep and dromedaries, waiting for an order. His singing is heard near the tower at night, pretending to be huge flows.

Moshe continuous ...:
Moshe ..: In Palmahim the surrender time genuflecting Miriam, going to the heights of the tower. It was so high that other two were built in the absence of the most beautiful image of Miriam!
In Palmahim with two children playing Miriam, nodding tired smiles to delight them with your company. Later, Jamal calls and tells them they boarded the wagon to go to Magdala, as the weather worsened giving sparkling  drops from the dark heaven. She takes children on his back and carries, while a voice call...
Jofat ..."Miriam ... human silhouette Miriam you lashed out in my consciousness stems filled with shattered by the voices of your tower, instead of spittle, threw on me ... sand ..."
Miriam ..: How not understand ... Already I go, Jamal comes next week, she goes with him to Magdala, Goodbye ...?!

Sherom follow  ...:
Sherom ...: On the outskirts of the village, standing water get across quartz effects mirrors, together with scattered clouds that were separated from the elderly seeking true face having the concave dome, munificent joy of receiving the source of the roof on abdomens lichens Migdal Cemetery.

Phandle to the cemetery to see his father, sitting on long solar gloomy. From a snowy mountain peak bravely he attaches to his return, his spirit, part of the sleeping immaterial life; her daughter resting under his feet, returning to his waking body, from her home. This sees abandoned, comes directly addressing the courtyard, there is a tendency and sleeps the days he was not.
Miriam ...(In the dream) ... "Father yet I have you gone, sometimes you hear me come at night, slept more I thought you were not and you just saw it with my neighbors put your white shroud for your rest...
In the tour, kisses the earth and see the tower, climb the steep rocks without spilling any of his ancestors, in the cold stones seemed to portray their faces doubt. Heavy rocks taken from Migdal, from their own ancestors, as if each stone should appear the illusion of taking the petrified intra bodies. Reaches the top, and a gale brought Galilee praise in his voice came ... then interrupted a manly voice ... "From here started the silent sound that opened my ears to want your divine fire, as they came from Galilee, went to fetch a big challenge to Palmahim ... astral and spoke Jofat dominated by the silhouette of Míriam "

Then woman of Magdala returned where his family, with his tower that never stopped jealous of her, because it was so high ... that everywhere is watching him...
And thus the mayor twin towers built to accompany her and Jamal gave him work to generate music and accompany him in his last days with the burning heat on his forehead. Provided, Miriam take charge of protecting children with high structure, similar in nobility Miriam attentions.

Existence
by Fadwa Tuqan the "Poet of Palestine"
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, yet distant!
Don't you remember the coalescence
Of your spirit in flames?
Of my universe with yours?
Of the two poets?
Despite our great distance,
Existence unites us.

Keywords/Tags: Fadwa Tuqan, Palestine, Palestinian, Arabic, translation, existence, love, darkness, star, stars, orbit, radiance



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



Nothing Remains
by Fadwa Tuqan
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Tonight, we’re together,
but tomorrow you'll be hidden from me
thanks to life’s cruelty.

The seas will separate us ...
Oh!—Oh!—If I could only 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,
leaving our hands empty.

Tomorrow at dawn 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 gulps up 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.

Published by This Week in Palestine and Hypercritic (read in Arabic by Souad Maddahi with my translation as a reference)



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.”

Fadwa Tuqan was born into an affluent, literary family in Nablus in 1917. Her brother Ibrahim Tuqan was the most famous Palestinian poet of his day. She studied English literature at Oxford University and won several international literary prizes.

Tuqan began writing in traditional forms, but later became a pioneer of Arabic free verse. Her work often deals with feminine explorations of love and social protest.

After the Nakba ("Catastrophe") of 1948 she began to write about Israel's occupation of Palestinian territories. Then, after the Six Day War of 1967, she also began writing patriotic poems.

Her autobiography "Difficult Journey―Mountainous Journey" was translated into English in 1990. Tuqan received the International Poetry Award, the Jerusalem Award for Culture and Arts and the United Arab Emirates Award, the latter two both in 1990. She also received the Honorary Palestine prize for poetry in 1996. She was the subject of a documentary film directed by novelist Liana Bader in 1999.

Tuqan died on December 12, 2003 during the height of the Al-Aqsa Intifada, while her hometown of Nablus was under siege. Her poem "Wahsha: Moustalhama min Qanoon al Jathibiya" ("Longing: Inspired by the Law of Gravity") was one of the last poems she penned, while largely bedridden.

Tuqan is widely considered to be a symbol of the Palestinian cause and is "one of the most distinguished figures of modern Arabic literature."

In his obituary for "The Guardian," Lawrence Joffe wrote: "The Palestinian poet Fadwa Tuqan, who has died aged 86, forcefully expressed a nation's sense of loss and defiance. Moshe Dayan, the Israeli general, likened reading one of Tuqan's poems to facing 20 enemy commandos." In her poem "Martyrs Of The Intifada," Tuqan wrote of young stone-throwers:

They died standing, blazing on the road
Shining like stars, their lips pressed to the lips of life
They stood up in the face of death
Then disappeared like the sun.

Yet the true power of her words derived not from warlike imagery, but from their affirmation of Palestinian identity and the dream of return.

"Her poetry reflected the pain, loss, and anger of the Nakba, the experience of fleeing war and living as a refugee, and the courageous aspirations of the Palestinians to nationhood and return to their homeland. She also wrote about resistance to Israel’s injustices and life under Israeli military occupation, especially after Nablus fell to Israeli forces in 1967, heralding Israel’s long-term occupation of the West Bank, which remains to this day." - Zeina Azzam

The Apocalypse is unleashed in the contiguity of Patmia, seeing the two antlers that protruded from his forehead emerge from the front of Moshe, shining on the Aegean Sea, and submerging to great depth. The circles on the sun were importuned with dissimilar spherical forms between the same axis of the shank that united it on the matron, who was dependent on the target. So when leaving the Water the Leviathan could not resist the attacks of the antlers, Wonthelimar appeared with his Kératas similar to that of Moshe as he was hanging with the ibics rings of him. The stratagem was to hinder the invasion of the Persians who were already on their way, just as they yearned for the work of Saint John the Apostle to ****** him from Patmian land in the concelebration of the child Messiah. The need arose to warn Vernarth that he was already in the Bay of Skalá, and it would allow him to bend his efforts. and to be more prepared with the terrifying scenes that the idolaters of Darius III intended, knowing that the force of Leviathan had been fused with them.

There were countless ships of Darius III, resurrected by this incoherent feat when the reasoning for the tasks they brought by taking revenge against Vernarth and Alexander the Great, who until now were with their demiurges reviewing the astrology of the twelve tribes that hung from the constellation that was it posed in the aquarium house, very extensive covering the hazy night before the Battle of Patmia, under the submitology that could be a spectroscopic binary. Where the light Zohar would carry the seven veils of the night to shine them in the spells that Vernarth and Alexander the Great conceived praying together with Saint John the Apostle, from where Orion also lined up towards the emotionality of the Animalia with this affront, disenchanting with all the crudeness of the pagan rites exercised by the Persians to avoid wandering in Patmian land, adverse to what they could not exercise in Arbela. There were seven hours of waiting which was equivalent to seven minutes in the decision-making process to rob the aggressors by assault. Considering it from the constellation of the Dragon or twelve tribes that were programmed with Vernarth in the twentieth of Aquarius, for later in the late one. The numerical value will be 4,561,092, which is the value of the gestation numeral of this retaliation when the apocalypse began in this celestial military grievance between two states. Vernarth created the 38 chapters up to this instance of 4,561,092, the sum of all the numbers indicated 27 from 4 to 2, making the circular from 4 to 2 and vice versa, restarting at zero which would be 24 being the circular of 42 of the origin of the lid in Patmia, which would lead to the illumination of the heavens 24 times 42 = 1,008 until the prophecy of Alikantus of this work, on page 108, indicating 24 x 37 = 888, representing the triplicity of the infinite omega-three times vertical in the sails of Hestia:

Prophecy VII -. "Second, Alikanto Aion, Quantum"

"Kalymnos, and his golden tetra steed Alikanto, were grazing under the metallic moon ...
he walked in his quantum ..., with his golden legs ..., in the four golden domes he was a super host being in Apoika Andros next to the villagers, commemorating the comparsas and adventures…, Heraklion next period, anniversary celebrant, bearing progeny of Kanti Cretan, with nearby cycles of the sacred fire, in the domestic and private environment of his zeal ... a hidden cult funeral ..., streets in a family home with sacred fertile women ..., pregnant totalized **** ... the longevity of productive and harvests ..., family Apoika
and next successor belligerence ..., in his funerary plexus ...
cultured predecessor ..., readable treaty and imprecation of law, subject and religion in a domestic scene, in a family civic servant ceremony.

Goddess Hestia austere, head with eight dressed sacred candles;
Olympus lacking without gods ..., the only embargo of Goddesses!
Female Hestia Domestic goddess, female stench with an oval to ovulate ...
Pritaneo, decree with the axis of political harvests ..., exchange grains to be mintedMonetary bag of Athens ... Pritaneus rising ford, rising ford ...Aion ... hesitant dart in the raid of eternity,
Perpetual Aion Alikanto ... Speak with both hands
synchronized and the tongue bent ...
stutters and swallows saliva, in six sinuses,
full of sparkling foam ..., Internal voice saying with her saying ...
what makes sense to feel and what does not turn off ...
sleeping voices in the poison of love igniting
intra-Vernarth love ..., billing the poisonous holy blood
in the methodical coupled time ..., Gaugamela with his bronze leg,
of a lost leader ... of a Gained leader!

If I had to run to rewrite retro poems Adhoc and chosen Trova,
of shy Trojan verse, I dare today if I kissed her in front of me…, Her! she would jump from the sky-hyperesthetic ..., in the inhuman to the world, Aion Celestine aurora, bleed your star in great defiance today In herself She ..., fetid condemnation of sweetness and aura in between her ... just be, same be, supported be ..., Oh ... Goddess Hestia against your leg disarmed appendix, meadow and vein braid ..., attacked by lost love and thirsty written everything tempts ..., everything wields obscurely if I take you to our Olympus ... at night loving you whole .., emptying everything with no other hand.
singing in the vine and the cleft of her intimate company, may she be exterminated ...

Love it if it were a nailed stake ..., it hurts by nailing ..., with stakes hurting ... exhausting the supra lips,  supra yours ..., the start of silica, I continue writing fully to her ... point of sword and blood made blurred, secret written maiden mythology, sword letter…, cyclamen balm made whole if I had you!

To the loves of the world, I say ..., cover your ears mushroom of boredom, your torn ears waste to hear rather than sordid to say ...
my blood kills, my blood revives! I **** my blood and I **** everyone with your blood scattered, and their ***** blood scattered ...?

Do not leave me alone until nightfall ... I only ask for holy water,
emptied from your mouth Goddess Hestia who flies with tons over me ... I only ask for a Xiphos sword with its sharp, ******, and scattered romantic blood ... to write to the wars of love that I have lost ... and the wars of love that I have conquered ... "

"... Alikanto says:" remember the Hoplite commander in Gaugamela, remember how with his head he dodged arrows so that they would not hit his body or chest "From the present moment that he falls by surrendering in his memory, he goes down to a stream and is imprisoned in the Vanitatory quagmire, he continues on his path reaching a jealous lagoon, he drinks sacred water and when he drinks again he manages to perceive the image of it in the mirror of the water of Aion… calling him from Patmos! Law that reminded his master of how he died for everyone in the world, just as the world would not let him bring more to die for him, because there was no more space ... "

Following Alikanto clenched his jaws too hard, all his incisors falling off, he asked the Gods in front of Hestia to restore them to him fifteen days before arriving at the Ekadashi on Patmos where his master would love all the lives of the world, as well as the hidden cries behind doors hiding the power of God… laughing at the flashes of irises and sighs for mummified lives that were left!

Vernarth, from Patmos, was calling him so that his eyes would look greenish like hooves of gray-green and vanadium fire, with humorous staining and with a clean predictive table in the near prediction. AlIkanto says goodbye to Kalimnos by sprinkling hyper-odoriferous chestnut flowers with Apoika in Kalimnos, loving from above, flying very close, loving everything so much that he forgot to fly. Sometimes he would fall hard but he would recover re-tried as a young steed in the womb of a mother and of a new species to be born! ending in the proportional one that would arrive at the residual that is the result of 24 by 38 = 888 of the Cirio de Hestia.

From this position the planets revolved around the brightness of Selene, linking to this numeral pattern in the zodiac house of de Reuben, 'boiling with water, which is Aquarius, who holds a vase or a cup and pours the waters of the New era. This is where Vernarth again takes the Gordian knot and throws it over the Matakis that was holding the world of both, where Saint John has to strongly support both of this tribulation, for the concepts of knowing how to cope with the parapsychological solar day of Vernarth, going back as it is with Alexander the Great 11 days before the Ekadashi, or half a month of the consecration of the phenomenon astral plane that would happen in the lands of Patmia. The Dragon's tail became spasmodic as it was unable to consecrate the agreement of the Over Being that found itself with the twinned identity in the twelve tribes when the bags of water fell on the Matakis, where the reverence would come from the departure of Reuben, and the blue-violet thekelet that perched in a mega rainbow over the roadstead of Skalá, turning the midwife's bags when she was going to give birth, carrying an infant with an ultraviolet Thekelet in the immediacy of Vernarth's Aquarium in its date of bi birth, and that of the leap-year that refers to the house of Capricorn with his beloved and faithful companion Wonthelimar, and the concomitance Simeon with Reuben, the latter being legitimately from the house of Capricorn.

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)



Nothing Remains
by Fadwa Tuqan
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Tonight, we’re together,
but tomorrow you'll be hidden from me
thanks to life’s cruelty.

The seas will separate us ...
Oh!—Oh!—If I could only 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,
leaving our hands empty.

Tomorrow at dawn 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 gulps up 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.

Published by This Week in Palestine and Hypercritic (read in Arabic by Souad Maddahi with my translation as a reference)



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.”

Fadwa Tuqan was born into an affluent, literary family in Nablus in 1917. Her brother Ibrahim Tuqan was the most famous Palestinian poet of his day. She studied English literature at Oxford University and won several international literary prizes.

Tuqan began writing in traditional forms, but later became a pioneer of Arabic free verse. Her work often deals with feminine explorations of love and social protest.

After the Nakba ("Catastrophe") of 1948 she began to write about Israel's occupation of Palestinian territories. Then, after the Six Day War of 1967, she also began writing patriotic poems.

Her autobiography "Difficult Journey―Mountainous Journey" was translated into English in 1990. Tuqan received the International Poetry Award, the Jerusalem Award for Culture and Arts and the United Arab Emirates Award, the latter two both in 1990. She also received the Honorary Palestine prize for poetry in 1996. She was the subject of a documentary film directed by novelist Liana Bader in 1999.

Tuqan died on December 12, 2003 during the height of the Al-Aqsa Intifada, while her hometown of Nablus was under siege. Her poem "Wahsha: Moustalhama min Qanoon al Jathibiya" ("Longing: Inspired by the Law of Gravity") was one of the last poems she penned, while largely bedridden.

Tuqan is widely considered to be a symbol of the Palestinian cause and is "one of the most distinguished figures of modern Arabic literature."

In his obituary for "The Guardian," Lawrence Joffe wrote: "The Palestinian poet Fadwa Tuqan, who has died aged 86, forcefully expressed a nation's sense of loss and defiance. Moshe Dayan, the Israeli general, likened reading one of Tuqan's poems to facing 20 enemy commandos." In her poem "Martyrs Of The Intifada," Tuqan wrote of young stone-throwers:

They died standing, blazing on the road
Shining like stars, their lips pressed to the lips of life
They stood up in the face of death
Then disappeared like the sun.

Yet the true power of her words derived not from warlike imagery, but from their affirmation of Palestinian identity and the dream of return.

"Her poetry reflected the pain, loss, and anger of the Nakba, the experience of fleeing war and living as a refugee, and the courageous aspirations of the Palestinians to nationhood and return to their homeland. She also wrote about resistance to Israel’s injustices and life under Israeli military occupation, especially after Nablus fell to Israeli forces in 1967, heralding Israel’s long-term occupation of the West Bank, which remains to this day." - Zeina Azzam

every single time, i'm like Ezra Pound at the end of
the cantos: may god forgive what i have made...
every, single, time... people i've known had
established families, had babies...
  and here i am asking to be forgiven having written
    an arsenal of verse... and asking to be pardoned for it...
the reason why world war II happened is because
the factions of world war I looked like they were cousins...
   they were! the reason why world war I happened
is that the powers at be were cousins,
children or grandchildren of queen ant Victoria...
all about-to-be-gouged-out fish eyed...
           world war I was a truly family affair...
don't know why it happened,
and i find even less reason to remember it
other than to prescribe monarchical power
for no power but mere pomp...
             i envision world war I as the classical framework
of warfare...
        world war II spelled out guerilla... a sort of thing
that didn't allow for state-visits...
           the great form of ******, that's what i call
world war I... world war II?
         a war of proxy... the Jews were the mediated
proxy ensemble...
              and i hate the fact that i can speak these
facts, or "facts", having the historical sofa...
  when saying such facts required a testy iron maiden's
worth of comfort...
                  the husbands of England...
charles I: beheaded... charles II: froliced having a libido
                                             of a fungus...
charles III: reigned for 24h...
            William IV: yawn... wish ***** Harry had
a shot at it... and by that time David Attenborough
was sniffing daisies from the roots up...
      while Clint Eastwood lived to be
                  one-hundred-and-thirty-five: spinsters of
the spaghetti ageing rhapsody for drawing evens
or 21 in jerking-jack.
               on the question of families...
we best look tailored as mum son and uncle,
father, grandad and auntie on the canvas of
a photograph... beyond it? ****** jokes...
       but then people who'd we wish to have interact
with also own about 20 chickens, a goat
and a barn that suggests we filter potato juice
against the hay for whiskey...
          but sure, sure, it makes sense...
    by urbanising people we feel not need to commit to
******... o with that barbarian practice of
selling Bulgarian brides at the cotton-smith market...
          i mean: apes inbreed almost everyday...
you see any spastics about? must be paradoxical,
hum-hmm-hum.       and that means:
barely any questions are needed.
                       but sure... world war I has a family affair...
i'll actually applaud ****** for doing away from
the monopoly of aquarium eyed inbreds that gave
us world war I... they were ******...
             back in Russia the Tsar looked like
the Kaiser of Germany, that looked like the King of England...
                     then some Serbian terrorist lit the sparkler
and all **** broke loose...
          cousin Vlad ****** tante Anne who in turn
            ***** the prudish third in line to the English throne
Beatrice...
            it only took, one blimmin' family to usurp Europe
and engage it in world war I...
               it took the same family to create the treaty
of Versailles and instigate the populism of alter
Marxism to craft the conscript papers for world war II...
but thankle gott for the Wehrmacht uniforms...
uber cool, uber zoo, uber zex... ßteit! prudence J. Austin!
          it only took one family...
and still world war I didn't invigorate the establishment
of Israel...
                      some say that was a worthy cause...
to have established Israel...
                   it meant the Jews disappeared from Europe
and we invited the Moshe Moshe mules of Ishmael...
                    sure... the Iron Curtain disappeared,
Pope John Paul II sold the harem of Eastern Europe...
and we became engaged in a new curtain... the ninja...
or what's already apparent the fluttering guise of
the ninja... the niqab... self-explanatory, in a sense:
no need to call it a curtain.

Birthdays are for nostalgia
and Kings of the desert
Like Moshe, Jesus, and Xander the Great
who came and saw and tried too hard
to mend some ever important scar
that much too late had been
left too long
to settle in the pyramid of our sleeping parts

Birthdays are for reading Hart Crane
and in his fashion, an attempt to become
indiscriminate as the wind that turns the weather vane
atop the roof where snow may fall
in an imagined winter,
lethargically covering all
in it's bitter farewell to Fall
as its grave-site is buried
by the Winter who loved it most enthralled

Birthdays are for thinking about you
The voice that remains
inside and always before the lights go out
and it's the end of my day
It's there, indiscriminate and howling
just like the wind that turns the weather vane
or the imagined winter
that only falls on my nearest window pane
in the pyramids that sleep beneath my very veins