The “Red Indian’s” Penultimate Speech to the White Man
A long time will pass for our present to become a past like us. But first, we will march to our doom, we will defend the trees we wear and defend the bell of the night, and a moon we desire over our huts. We will defend the imprudence of our gazelles, the clay of our pots And our feathers in the wings of the final songs. In a little while you will erect your world upon our world: from our cemeteries you will open the road to the satellite moon. This is the age of industry. This is the age of minerals, and put of coal the champagne of the strong will dawn … There are dead and settlements, dead and bulldozers, dead and hospitals, dead and radar screens that capture the dead who die more than once in life, screens that capture the dead who live after death, and the dead who breed the beast of civilization as death, and the dead who die to carry the earth after the relics … Where, master of white ones, do you take my people … and your people? To what abyss does this robot loaded with planes and plane carriers take the earth, to what spacious abyss do you ascend? You have what you desire: the new Rome, the Sparta of technology and the ideology of madness, but as for us, we will escape from an age we haven’t yet prepared our anxieties for. We will move to the land of birds as a flock of previous humans and look upon our land through its pebbles, through holes in the clouds, look upon our land through the speech of stars and through the air of the lakes, through the fragile corn fuzz and the tomb’s flower, through poplar leaves, through everything that besieges you, white ones, we will look, as dying dead, as dead who live, dead who return, who disclose the secrets, so grant the earth respite until it tells the truth, all the truth, about you and us …
Mahmoud Darwish (1941-2008) was a renowned Palestinian national poet.
Return to Table of Contents (Left Turn #4)