Mahmoud Darwish portrays the Palestinian struggle against the occupation in “State of Siege,” a long poem published as a book in 2002. The book is centered around pain, hope, love and joy in dealing with the Israeli “siege.” While narrating stories of the struggle in prose, Darwish addresses the concepts of peace and war and looks for a common denominator between the victims and their oppressor– humanity. 

Written 12 years ago, the poem could describe the current events in Gaza.

Below are translated excerpts from the book.

Here, at the slopes of the hills, 

in front of the sunset

and the hollow of time,

near fields with finite shadow,

we do what is done by the unemployed and prisoners:

We raise hope.

A country ready for dawn. We became less intelligent

because we stare at the clock of victory.

There is no night in our night which is filled with artillery.

Our enemies stay up and give us light 

in the darkness of dungeons.

This siege will remain until we teach our enemies

samples from our poetry from Antiquity.

Under siege, life becomes time,

between remembrance in its beginning

and forgetfulness in its end.

Here, at the rise of smoke, on the stairs of the house,

no time for time.

We do what is done by those ascending to God:

We forget the pain.

Pain is:

When the housewife does not hang the laundry rope,

and lives with only the cleanliness of this world. 

Soldiers measure the distance between existence 

and nothingness with tanks’ binoculars.

We measure the distance between our bodies and the bombs

with the sixth sense. 

Standers on our doorsteps,

come in and drink Arabic coffee with us,

perhaps you would feel you are humans like us.

Standers on our doorsteps,

leave our mornings,

so we can be assured

we are humans like you.

To a killer: If you looked at the face of the victim

and thought, you would have remembered your mother 

in the gas chamber.

You would have liberated yourself of the moral of the rifle

and changed your mind: That’s not how identity is reclaimed.

To another Killer: If you had left the fetus for thirty days,

the possibilities would have changed:

The occupation might be over, 

and that newborn would not remember the time of siege,

so he would grow up a healthy child

and study the ancient history of Asia

in college with one of your daughters.

They might fall in love together

And conceive a girl (who would be Jewish by birth).

What did you do then?

Your daughter became a widow,

and the granddaughter became an orphan.

What did you do to your scattered family?

How did you hit three pigeons with one bullet?

Lonely. We are lonely to drunkenness 

if it weren’t for the visits of the rainbow

We have siblings beyond this horizon.

Kind siblings. They love us. They watch us and cry.

Then they say in their silence:

I wish the siege were here, so perhaps… 

And they don’t finish the statement.

Don’t leave us alone. Don’t leave us.

When the planes disappear,

doves fly, cleanse the cheek of the sky,

with free wings that reclaim the magnificence and ownership of 

of the atmosphere and playfulness.

And higher fly the doves, white white.

I wish the sky were real, a man passing between two bombs

told me.

A woman told the cloud:

Cover my love, for my clothes are soaked in his blood.

If you are not rain my beloved,

be a tree.

Full of fertility… Be a tree.

And if you are not a tree my beloved,

then be a rock,

full of humidity… be a rock.

And it you are not a rock my beloved,

be a moon,

in the sleep of the inamorata, be a moon.

(That’s what a woman 

told her son in his funeral).

Standing here. Siting here. Forever here. Immortalized here.

And we have one goal. One one one: To be.

“Me” or “him.”

That’s how war begins.

But it ends with an uncomfortable meeting:

“Me and him.”

“I am her forever.”

That’s how love begins.

But when it ends,

it ends with an uncomfortable meeting:

“Me and her.”

The martyr clarifies to me: I did not look behind the horizon

for eternal virgins. I love life here on Earth,

Between pine and fig trees,

but I found no way to it, so I looked 

for it in the last thing I own:

the blood in the lapis lazuli body.

Peace to those who share my attention to the 

trance of light, light of the butterfly, in the night of this tunnel.

Peace is the nostalgia of two enemies, separately,

for yawning on the sidewalk of boredom.

Peace is the sighing of lovers

bathing with moonlight.

Peace is the collapse of swords in front of nature’s

beauty, where the dew rusts the steel.