To a Young Poet BY MAHMOUD DARWISH (Translated by Fady Joudah) Don’t believe our outlines, forget them and begin from your own words. As if you are the first to write poetry or the last poet. If you read our work, let it not be an extension of our airs, but to correct our errs in the book of agony. Don’t ask anyone: Who am I? You know who your mother is. As for your father, be your own. Truth is white, write over it with a crow’s ink. Truth is black, write over it with a mirage’s light. If you want to duel with a falcon soar with the falcon. If you fall in love with a woman, be the one, not she, who desires his end. Life is less alive than we think but we don’t think of the matter too much lest we hurt emotions’ health. If you ponder a rose for too long you won’t budge in a storm. You are like me, but my abyss is clear. And you have roads whose secrets never end. They descend and ascend, descend and ascend. You might call the end of youth the maturity of talent or wisdom. No doubt, it is wisdom, the wisdom of a cool non-lyric. One thousand birds in the hand don’t equal one bird that wears a tree. A poem in a difficult time is beautiful flowers in a cemetery. Example is not easy to attain so be yourself and other than yourself behind the borders of echo. Ardor has an expiration date with extended range. So fill up with fervor for your heart’s sake, follow it before you reach your path. Don’t tell the beloved, you are I and I am you, say the opposite of that: we are two guests of an excess, fugitive cloud. Deviate, with all your might, deviate from the rule. Don’t place two stars in one utterance and place the marginal next to the essential to complete the rising rapture. Don’t believe the accuracy of our instructions. Believe only the caravan’s trace. A moral is as a bullet in its poet’s heart a deadly wisdom. Be strong as a bull when you’re angry weak as an almond blossom when you love, and nothing, nothing when you serenade yourself in a closed room. The road is long like an ancient poet’s night: plains and hills, rivers and valleys. Walk according to your dream’s measure: either a lily follows you or the gallows. Your tasks are not what worry me about you. I worry about you from those who dance over their children’s graves, and from the hidden cameras in the singers’ navels. You won’t disappoint me, if you distance yourself from others, and from me. What doesn’t resemble me is more beautiful. From now on, your only guardian is a neglected future. Don’t think, when you melt in sorrow like candle tears, of who will see you or follow your intuition’s light. Think of yourself: is this all of myself? The poem is always incomplete, the butterflies make it whole. No advice in love. It’s experience. No advice in poetry. It’s talent. And last but not least, Salaam.
Posted on: Tue, 23 Jul 2013 17:36:00 +0000
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