From Blessings for Something that Has not Arrived by Palestinian poet Mahmud Darwish (my translation):
"Their blood is before me
inhabiting the cities that are nearer
as if their wounds are ships of return
And they alone can't return...
Their blood is before me..
I don't see it
As if it is my homeland
Before me...I don't see it
Like the roads of Jaffa--
I don't see it
like the roofs of Haifa--
I don't see it
As if all the windows of the homeland
have disappeared in the flesh
Only they can see
And the sense of blood ripened in them
and led them to twenty lost years
And now, it takes its coming shape
their beloved...
And return them to its vein.
Their blood are before me..
I don't see it
As if all the streets of the homeland
disappeared in the flesh
They alone can see
because they are being liberated from
the skin of defeat
and mirrors
Here they are splattered
on their old roofs
like swallow and shrapnels
Here they are being liberated...
Blessings for something vague
blessings for something that has not arrived
They deciphered its secrets and they
were shredded
So I marked their steps as the beginning
(Here are the trees blossoming
in my chains)
And I belonged to their vision
(Here is the port appearing
in my borders)
And the dream is always more true.
There is no difference between the dream
and the homeland stationed behind it...
The dream is always more true.
There is no difference between the dream
and the body hiding in a shrapnel
and the dream is more real
The slope is bigger than their arms
but...
they tried to climb
and the sea is farther than their phases
but...
they tried to cross
And the stars are nearer than their homes
but...
they tried to rejoice
and the earth is narrower than their visions
but...
they tried to dream
Blessings for something vague!
Blessings for something that has not arrived
They deciphered its secrets and they shattered them
So I marked their steps as the beginning
and I belonged to their visions
Oh, o things! Be vague
So that we can be more clear than you
The senses are bankrupt, and
have become restrictions on our dreams
and to the borders of Jerusalem,
The senses are bankrupt,
and the sense of blood has ripened
in them
and led them to the faraway face
...
they rebelled
they united...
and they climbed the wall of this age
They knocked down the wall of exile
they made ladders from their chains
to kiss her feet
and the people crowded as rings in their ring...
The thing or they?
They now enter the particles of one another,
the thing becomes bodies,
and they are splintering between the
sea and the abandoned cities
coast
or orange--
everything ends with this wedding
a whole era...a whole age ends
this is the Palestinian wedding
The beloved does not reach the beloved
except as a martyr or as a fugitive"