\u201cIn my poetry,\u201d Taha Muhammad Ali says, \u201cthere is no Palestine, no Israel. But, in my poetry, suffering, sadness, longing, fear, and this is, together, make the results: Palestine and Israel. The art is to take from life something real, then to build it anew with your imagination.\u201d<\/p>\n
REVENGE<\/p>\n
Translated by Peter Cole, Yahya Hijazi and Gabriel Levin<\/p>\n
At times … I wish *<\/p>\n But if it came to light, *<\/p>\n Likewise … I *<\/p>\n But if he turned Nazareth Taha,\u00a0who lost his family home to Israel in the 1948 War and lived in Nazareth until his death in 2011, rebuilds anew with imagination in this acutely aware poem.\u00a0 Ruminating about revenge (but way too kind to enact violence), the poet wanders into the open field of empathy and \u00a0imagines his enemy’s mothers and fathers in vivid detail. Then he goes to another condition: What if his enemy, the one who killed his father, has no tribe or human connection: that would be death on earth.<\/p>\n Real revenge would be to ignore this lonely enemy by making him a nonperson.\u00a0 He would “convince himself” that would be enough revenge.\u00a0 Convince himself.<\/em>\u00a0 Taha knew that these acts of humanity come from discipline and training. \u00a0Turning the pits of pain into something else requires enormous courage. \u00a0The imagination holds the key to new reality.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u201cIn my poetry,\u201d Taha Muhammad Ali says, \u201cthere is no Palestine, no Israel. But, in my poetry, suffering, sadness, longing, fear, and this is, together, make the results: Palestine and Israel. The art is to take from life something real, … Continue reading
\nI could meet in a duel
\nthe man who killed my father
\nand razed our home,
\nexpelling me
\ninto
\na narrow country.
\nAnd if he killed me,
\nI’d rest at last,
\nand if I were ready\u2014
\nI would take my revenge!<\/span><\/p>\n
\nwhen my rival appeared,
\nthat he had a mother
\nwaiting for him,
\nor a father who’d put
\nhis right hand over
\nthe heart’s place in his chest
\nwhenever his son was late
\neven by just a quarter-hour
\nfor a meeting they’d set\u2014
\nthen I would not kill him,
\neven if I could.<\/p>\n
\nwould not murder him
\nif it were soon made clear
\nthat he had a brother or sisters
\nwho loved him and constantly longed to see him.
\nOr if he had a wife to greet him
\nand children who
\ncouldn’t bear his absence
\nand whom his gifts would thrill.
\nOr if he had
\nfriends or companions,
\nneighbours he knew
\nor allies from prison
\nor a hospital room,
\nor classmates from his school …
\nasking about him
\nand sending him regards.<\/p>\n
\nout to be on his own\u2014
\ncut off like a branch from a tree\u2014
\nwithout a mother or father,
\nwith neither a brother nor sister,
\nwifeless, without a child,
\nand without kin or neighbours or friends,
\ncolleagues or companions,
\nthen I’d add not a thing to his pain
\nwithin that aloneness\u2014
\nnot the torment of death,
\nand not the sorrow of passing away.
\nInstead I’d be content
\nto ignore him when I passed him by
\non the street\u2014as I
\nconvinced myself
\nthat paying him no attention
\nin itself was a kind of revenge.<\/p>\n
\nApril 15, 2006<\/em><\/p>\n