The great twentieth-century poet Mahmoud Darwish was born on this day in 1941. Today, author-translator Alaa Alqaisi shares a letter to Darwish and a poem, after Darwish’s “In Praise of the High Shadow.”
In Praise of What Is No Longer Ours
By Alaa Alqaisi
This poem is in response to Mahmoud Darwish’s “مديح الظل العالي,” an excerpt of which has been translated as “In Praise of the High Shadow” by Saifedean Ammous.
It is not for me to be, or not to be.
It is not for me to create, or not to create.
That choice was taken before I was given a name.
Before the sky carved its judgment into our homes,
Before the sea forgot its promise.
That choice was never mine.
What do I want?
A homeland?
What good has a homeland done
For those who have never known its embrace?
Have the borders of a map ever shielded a child
From the hunger of an endless war?
What do I want?
A passport?
Would a passport stop the earth from swallowing us whole?
Would it make the rubble speak the names
Of those buried beneath it?
What do I want?
Not a flag—
For I have seen flags draped over the bodies of the young,
Wrapped around them like shrouds.
They do not bring the dead back to life.
They do not turn the dust into a home.
What do I want?
Not a newspaper—
For I have seen my story printed in the margins of history,
Erased before it could be written,
Translated into silence.
What do I want?
Not police—
For the law here is the sound of approaching drones,
And the judge is the one who holds the rifle.
So leave.
But leave to where?
The roads are closed,
The sea is locked,
The sky is a border drawn in fire.
You say, leave to yourself,
But where is the self
When the pieces have been scattered?
A body in the north,
A father in the south,
A home in the past.
What is left of me
When even my shadow
Has been burned into the walls?
You walked exile like a river,
But here, exile is the stillness of a land
That has forgotten its own name.
You were the master of departure,
But we are the prisoners of waiting.
You carried the homeland on your back,
But here, the homeland is the weight
That crushes us beneath it.
How vast is the wound,
How narrow the breath,
How small the grave,
How endless the war.
I do not write this in praise.
I write this because I am still here,
Because I am still here,
Because I am still here—
And that, Mahmoud, is the only victory
I can claim
Alaa Alqaisi is a Palestinian translator, writer, and researcher from Gaza, deeply passionate about literature, language, and the power of storytelling to bridge cultures and bear witness to lived realities.