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Mahmoud Darwish in Jean-Luc Godard's Notre musique--(2004)

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Speak to her

like a flute speaks to a

fearful string

on a violin.

~ Mahmoud Darwish

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The poet wrote the title of his poem.

He was tired like a severed head.

Alone like a desert falling into the sea.

Lonely like a grave, waiting for a corpse stolen by thieves.

When he attempted to write his poem;

The head besieged him.

The desert surrounded him.

The corpse and the grave mocked him.

And the thieves captured him...

~ Adeeb Kamal Ad-Deen

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Wanted to buy you violets this morning,

But friends were hungry,

So, I bought them bread,

And wrote you a love poem.

~ Mahmoud Darwish

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In the summer

I stretch out on the shore

And think of you.

Had I told the sea

What I felt for you,

It would have left its shores,

Its shells,

Its fish,

And followed me.

~ Nizar Qabbani

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And place me like an ivory comb

in the darkness of your hair… then forget me.

~ Qabbani

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Nobody is asleep on earth.

That boy they buried this morning cried so much

it was necessary to call out the dogs to keep him quiet.

~ Lorca

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When the moon sails out

with a hundred identical faces,

the coins made of silver

weep in your pocket.

~ Lorca

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–Alphaville: A Strange Adventure of Lemmy Caution - 1965

Dir. Jean-Luc Goddard

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Aur tumhe sonchte huye aksar;

Meri cigarette hui hai raakh yunhi...

Often I kept thinking about you;

While my cigarette burnt itself to ashes!

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It is the goal of my life

to write poems

that are claimed by children.

~ Mahmoud Darwish

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I walk

and in my pocket

a message in a scarlet envelope

beats like my second heart.

~ Abdulla Pashew

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Another day will come, a womanly day.

Songlike in gesture, lapis in greeting and in phrase.

All things will be feminine outside the past.

Water will flow from rock's bosom.

No dust, no drought, no defeat.

And a dove will sleep in the afternoon

in an abandoned combat tank

if it doesn't find a small nest in the lovers' bed.

~ Mahmoud Darwish

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I went to the coffeehouse

intending to forget

our love and bury

my sorrows,

but

you emerged from

the bottom of

my coffee cup,

a white Rose.

~ Nizar Qabbani

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On a simple sheet of paper, the moon sent these simple lines to the sun’s house: “after all these years of waiting for you, I feel too shy to ask: why don’t you marry me?”

And the sun, by way of one of the stars, replied: “after all these years of hiding from you, I don’t want to tell you: I don’t dare.”

-- Kajal Ahmed

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“We need an angry generation

To plough horizons

To blow up history

To blow up our thoughts.

We need a new generation

That does not forgive mistakes

That does not bend.

We need a generation of giants.”

~ Nizar Qabbani

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I don’t know how to become one with you.

If you’re heaven, then tell me.

I will kneel to every god.

If you’re hell, then tell me.

I will fill the earth with sin.

I don’t know how to become one with you.

If you’re an invaded soil, then tell me.

I will make my skin your flag.

If you are, as I am, a gypsy.

Draw a border around me,

and make me your country.

~ Abdulla Pashew.