Man Down

Oh, my heart is rent. Mahmoud Darwish, who I did not know, except through his poems, which is the only way to know most friends, has--how impossible--died.

A recent poem from the Virginia Poetry Review: click the title to read the rest.

With the Mist So Dense on the Bridge

With the mist so dense on the bridge, he said to me,
“Is anything known to the contrary?”
I said, “At dawn, things will be clear.”

He said, “There is no time more obscure than dawn.
Let your imagination succumb
to the river.
In the blue dawn,
in the prison yard or near the pine yard,
a young man is executed, along with his hopes for victory.

In the blue dawn, the smell of bread
forms a map of a life where summer is more like a spring.
In the blue dawn, dreamers wake gently
and merrily walk in the waters of their dream.”