umkahlil

Today, 'National Poetry in Your Pocket Day,' I'll be reading in Wiesbaden High School's foyer Kamal Nassir's "Letter to Fadwa," (p 236), a poem he wrote while he was imprisoned in the 1950s. It is a response to a letter from Fadwa Tuqan, a famous Palestinian poet from Nablus. Kamal Nasir was assasinated in Beirut by Ehud Barak, the terrorist currently operating as the Zionist entity's defense minister. The murderer took pains to riddle his hand and his mouth with bullets. Nassir's words are eerily prophetic. The Zionist butcher killed his body, but the spirit of the poet shines through his poetry. I was introduced to the poetry of Kamal Nassir by my late father, Baseel Harb from Ramallah, Palestine. We will return in the words of Nassir; we will return one day "to pick the fruits."

If my songs should reach you
despite the blocked skies around us,
it is because I've spread my wings
to embrace your tortured span,
because we share tragedy
and dark destiny,
and together we partake of
memories, wishes, dreams.

I am what you've wanted me to be
and what hardships have decreed
Rejecting humiliation,
I've claimed my foothold over the clouds,
bleeding till my wounds
tinted the summits with red.
I've loved my homeland, so my heart
aspires joyously to brave the tides.
Regret or cease? That could not be
Since when did a poet seek honor or regret?

Sister, today your letter arrived,
bright with lofty spirit,
bringing glad balm to my wounds
and stirring my dormant pen to reply.
Yes, I recall, I do recall
our happy evenings, our carefree friends
beneath the shading jasmine bushes,
our wings open to joy, or folded
with melancholy . . .

We talked until a dream took hold of us
and we grasped its slumbering mirage.
Yes, I remember how you spoke your poems,
resplendent, proud and free on everyone's lips,
more beautiful than the impossible
Your songs, like sunrays in our country,
feed us with desire and hope
awakening to the sounds of struggle,
the fluttering of banners raised high.

I am still as you hoped I would be,
sun's rays kissing my forehead as I walk,
even alone, toward my goal.
Desire for freedom is my cross;
I thirst, though the cup is in my hand!
Life seethes in my youthful veins
yet I wander naked, seeking life for
my wounded people, that they might live
with happy pride, building their world.

And you? Should my letter arrive
and you find tears scattered among the lines,
do not worry--great hopes must weep
as they struggle to reach the heights.
Tomorrow the night shall withdraw, humiliated,
from our land, and the people abandon illusion,
discovering their strength
Millions shall swear never to sleep
While there be yet one foothold left for wolves,
and through all the suffering they will yearn
for that moment of reckoning truth.

If my songs should reach you
despite the narrow skies around me,
remember that I will return to life,
to the quest for liberty,
remember that my people many call on my soul
and feel it rising again from the folds of the earth.