Eulogy
(In memory of Mahmoud
Darwish)
A tiny speck of dust
Corrects its position on the windowsill
As it looks out at a hill in Galilee
Where a village
lost her name.
Inside this wondering grain
Are the genetic annals of the land
It can now– posthumously – inspect.
Our speck did not awake from Europe’s nightmare
To breakfast here.
No armies secured its place, no vetoes either.
This is home grown dust
That carefully chose this spot
To remember, in death, the life it led
As a skin flake
In the body of a national poet
Whose body of work
May come to serve as
Eulogy for a nation,
Caged in nightmare,
Forever on the brink of stillbirth.
Hassan Abdulrazzak |
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