Unfortunately it was Paradise

Mahmoud Darwish's poetry was powerful. However, I found much of it to be hard to fully grasp. I really would have liked to read the poems in their original language; I am left wondering if things were lost in translation (although the poems are still amazing).

I used "The Flute Cried" and "We Went to Aden" for my comparison. For me, while they were shorter than many of the other poems, these poems were very dense and held great emotion. "The Flute Cried" had some really amazing lines and a sorrowful tone that could not be ignored. There are a couple lines in particular that I really liked: " Silk weeps on the shores and passes through a sobbing cry./ Landscapes fill with tears. The flute cried and tore the sky into two women." and "O shout of/ infinite silence, cry: Damascus, my woman, I will love and I will survive." While I do not think I could fully appreciate the struggle and events that give the poet and the poem such amazing tone, I found it to be one of my favorites.

I liked my second poem because it had a different tone than the first one. It was less about sadness and more about resistance, holding fast, and in some ways hope. There is, again, a sense of hardship and tragedy. However, the voice comes through that there is hope. That displacement and hardship cannot break their spirit, history or culture. The ties to oneself and one's past really come through in the poem. I really liked "we are besieged by tribes, friend, stricken by misfortunes./ Yet we didn't trade the bread of the trees for the enemy's loaf." and I liked "We went to Aden ahead of our dreams. The moon was shining/ on the wing of a crow. WE gazed at the sea."