As a part of its continuing effort to share a portion of the literary wealth of Arabic poetry with the English reader, The Arab American News translates a poem by the legendary Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish.

In Jerusalem, I mean inside the old walls,

I walk from an era to an era with no memory to guide me. 

Prophets there share the sacred history. 

They ascend to the sky

And return with lessened sorrow and frustration, 

For love and peace are sacred and coming to the city.

I was walking on a hillside, anxiously wondering:

How would storytellers disagree about the speech of light in a rock?

Would wars begin from a rock with dim light?

I walk in my sleep. I stare in my slumber. 

I don’t see anybody behind me. I don’t see anybody ahead of me.

All this light is mine. 

I walk. I run. I fly.

Then I become somebody else in transfiguration.  

The words grow like grass from the mouth of Prophet Isaiah: 

“If you did not believe. You will not believe.”

I walk as if I were somebody else, 

And my wound is a white Biblical flower, 

And my hands are two doves on the cross. 

They fly over and carry the Earth.

I don’t walk. I fly. I become someone else in transfiguration. 

No time, no space. So who am I?

I am not myself in the presence of the Mi’raj*. 

But I reflect: Only prophet Mohamad spoke formal Arabic. 

“And then what?”

And then what? Suddenly a soldier yelled.

Is that you again? Didn’t I kill you?

I said: You killed me… and I forgot to die like you.

* Mi’raj is a visit by Prophet Mohamad to heaven, in which he ascended from a rock in Jerusalem to the sky, according to Islamic tradition.                                            

 — Translated by Ali Harb