Gaza & Poem

November 4, 2006

The death toll since the start of the Israeli incursion to Beit Hanoun
and northern Gaza on Wednesday has reached 40 Palestinians killed, and
more than 200 injured; 30 of them in critical condition.

Meanwhile, in the West Bank, incursions into Bethlehem, Nablus, Khalil
and more....doesn't make the news anymore.

Everything shut down today.

Love to all my peeps from Ramallah il muhtallah.


Here is a poem Mahmoud wrote in 2002.....


The siege is lying in wait.
It is lying in wait on a tilted stairway
in the midst of a storm.

We are alone. We are alone to the point
of drunkenness with our own aloneness,
with the occasional rainbow visiting.

We have brothers and sisters overseas..
kind sisters, who love us..
who look our way and weep.
And secretly they say
"I wish that siege was here, so that I could…"
But they cannot finish the sentence.
Do not leave us alone. No.
Do not leave us alone.

Our losses are between two and eight a day.
And ten are wounded.
Twenty homes are gone.
Forty olive groves destroyed,
in addition to the structural damage
afflicting the veins of the poem, the play,
and the unfinished painting.
(Mahmud Darwish, A State of Siege, 2002, translated by Ramsis Amun)