Arabic Poetry: Trajectories of Modernity and Tradition

Christian connotations of sacrifice and redemption that debunk any counter
claims, and set the scene for a poetics that combines the discursive and the
metaphorical.

As if I returned

to what has been

As if I walked

in front of myself

I restore my harmony

between the trial and the verdict

I am the son

of simple words

I am the martyr of the map

the family apricot blossom

O you who grip the edge

of the impossible

From the beginning until Galilee

Return to me my lands

Return to me

My identity

The rhetorical call means only to inscribe the terms and nature of this
Palestinian identity. Its power emanates from its background where the poet’s
voice merges with the voice of narrator.

And in the month of March come the silken shadows (and without

shadows the invaders). The birds come mysterious as the confessions

of girls...Five girls conceal a wheat field under their braids. They

read the first words of a song about the vines of Hebron. They write

five letters: Long may my country live... Five girls at the door of a

primary school break like mirrors

they were the heart—mirrors of the country

Earth in the month of March

set fire to her flowers

The merged voice becomes even larger than the two, the poet and the narrator,
for the girls’ songs and their inscriptions become part of an inventory of
nationhood, of sacrifice and resistance.

I am the witness of the massacre

I am the victim of the map

I am the son of simple words

...

POETIC DIALOGIZATION