Mahmoud Darwish is dead. The great poet of Palestinian displacement died in a Houston hospital after open-heart surgery. In a poem in his 2006 “Diary,” Darwish writes,
If you were told: you’re going to die here this evening
What would you do in the remaining time?
… I realize how my life
Is about to leave me to stay with the living here
And I do not question what will fill the gap.
At the beginning of the US invasion of Iraq, Darwish wrote, in the anguished Nothing but Iraq:
… Indeed, poetry is
tribulation
And exile
Twins … and we didn’t dream of more
than a life as life
and to die in our own way:
Iraq, Iraq, Nothing But Iraq.