Poetry Without End

I am a slow reader. For me, reading is a somatic experience so it can take me a while to digest poetry, prose, and news. While I stay informed, I refuse to consume news the way mainstream media feeds it to me. Especially when it comes to human conflict where we see too many dehumanizing images, statistics, and reports of increasing numbers of civilian ‘casualties,’ a numbing military term derived from the Latin casus meaning “plight, chance, fortune,” and “fall.” Rarely do we see the beauty of a people’s culture or stories of individuals who have loved deeply, stewarded land, and made art and music from it all.

I’ve been making my way through I Don’t Want This Poem to End, a collection of poetry by Mahmoud Darwish, a celebrated Palestinian author and poet known by many as the “voice of the voiceless.” The collection is named for the poignant title of his last poem before he passed away in 2008. In a 2002 interview with The Progressive magazine, Darwish said, "I thought poetry could change everything, could change history and could humanize… And I think that the illusion is very necessary to push poets to be involved and to believe." Dog-earing pages, I’ve been reading and rereading poems slowly, feeling the beauty and ache of his words.

Reem Kelani is among the artists who sing his poetry so I’ve been listening to her music and following the work of the Palestine Festival Of Literature, and Palestine Writes. Reflecting on the power of art to tell the truth; to bridge the chasm between atrocity and empathy. All while trying to digest the indigestible.

Photo by Jenin Abumazen on Unsplash

My family has roots on both sides of this conflict. My sister Alecia, also an incredible artist, described those connections in October when the violence escalated: 

 “The memories of this violent occupation lives deep within my bones, along both ancestral lines…

I grew up alongside a wounded Palestinian refugee living in my childhood home.

I came home from school one day to the news that an Israeli cousin was killed on his way home from school. We were the same age.

A Palestinian cousin, my Grandpa Chakour’s age, wrote a memoir about his experience surviving the horrors of the Nakba in the ‘40s and his ongoing quest for peace and liberation (Blood Brothers).

Most of my Jewish Sampa’s family did not survive the Holocaust but those who did passed their stories on for us to carry. We still hold the family photos received in the mail with these words written on the back: “Do not forget us.”

The waves of grief are always there. Just enormous now.”

Like my sister shared, our beloved maternal grandfather, now gone, was Jewish. But for all intents and purposes was an atheist. He felt religions divided people when what we really needed was to get along. I agree.

Old Almond Tree in Palestine. Photo by nour tayeh on Unsplash

Israeli leaders have called Palestinian people “human animals” as a derogatory term meant to dehumanize. But we humans are animals. We are mammals related to every plant, fungi and four legged creature on this incredible Earth. When we forget that we are related, that we are nature, it is easier to “other” and to destroy the very home we and all other animals depend upon to survive and to thrive. Woven together in wild beauty, we belong here. Solidarity lies in the reality of our interdependence and our shared vulnerability. And no other animal causes harm like humans do; I am proud to be an animal.

I have no answers or conclusions here, just an ongoing inquiry about how to show up for extended relatives in need, how to digest the indigestible, and how to embrace joy when others are suffering.

I think of what Naomi Klein wrote for the Guardian early on in this painful conflict “ … side with the child over the gun every time, no matter whose child and no matter whose gun.”

Tobias Menzies reading at The Palestine Festival of Literature, PalFest, London Event: Nakba - A Century of Resistance & Solidarity | November 1st 2023

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