To My Mother
By Mahmoud Darwish (March 13, 1941 – August 9, 2008)
I long for my mother’s bread
My mother’s coffee
Her touch
Childhood memories grow up in me
Day after day
I must be worth my life
At the hour of my death
Worth the tears of my mother
And if I come back one day
Take me as a veil to your eyelashes
Cover my bones with the grass
Blessed by your footsteps
Bind us together
With a lock of your hair
With a thread that trails from the back of your dress
I might become immortal
Become a God
If I touch the depths of your heart
If I come back
Use me as wood to feed your fire
As the clothesline on the roof of your house
Without your blessing
I am too weak to stand
I am old
Give me back the star maps of childhood
So that I
Along with the swallows
Can chart the path
Back to your waiting nest
…
Mahmoud Darwish, born in 1941 in the village of Al-Birweh, Palestine, was a Palestinian poet and author who won numerous awards for his literary work and was regarded as the Palestinian national poet. When he died in the summer of 2008, he was mourned throughout the world as a voice of the Palestinian people —author of their official declaration of independence and, most importantly, a poet of the highest invention and beauty. Mahmoud Darwish is one of Palestine’s greatest treasures.