Best Palestine Poems

English translations of Arabic poems by Fadwa Tuqan aka "The Poet of Palestine"

Enough for Me
by Fadwa Tuqan 
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Enough for me to lie in the earth,
to be buried in her,
to sink meltingly into her fecund soil, to vanish ...
only to spring...

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Oh, Palestine
Cry, cry generously
Cry more
Let your tears wash their sins
Let your tears wash their brutality

Oh, Palestine
Struggle, struggle endlessly
Struggle more
Let your people teach them,
The meaning of "Dignity"

Oh, Palestine
Live, live happily
Live more
Let them learn how to dream
Let them see how we challenge bravely

Oh, Palestine
Grow, grow prosperously
Grow more
Let...

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Palestine:
The land of Zaatar, Zaytoon
and Lime
 
Palestine:
The land of progressive and loving people
 at her core.
 
The British Empire promised the rocky terrain
(From which the Empire yielded no fruit
 Nor money!)
 
 To displaced people:  The Jews;
 
The Jews called her
The promised land:
The land...

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I feel to say,  
I feel to say loud ,
 loudly today 
But If I say the truth 
Many people won't see this injustice.
Why  mass killings of innocent people? 

I feel to say,  
I feel to say loud ,
 loudly today 
But If I  say the truth...

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The world was silent as they died
The victims of a genocide
Armenian blood considered cheap
Dehumanized, their wounds cut deep
Starvation in a desert land
A naked, bleeding, hopeless band
The relocation just a ruse
A Death March of rampant abuse

Few decades later, Hitler said,
“Forgotten are Armenian dead.
Perhaps I too can...

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I had the worst terrors last night
My mind was in a gruesome sight
The ‘ol  apocryphal scene
Insighted by the new regime

Migration bill stirs fear among
Farmworkers chant that  It’s Wrong!
Phone app saves Honduran journalist
Can’t go back she’s on their death list
Can’t walk ‘n get food...

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Cries of humanity
Cries of war
War that kills
War imposed upon kids 
Kids as pure as a Mother’s love
Kids with million dreams
Dreams that are shattered 
Dreams destroyed by weapons 
Weapons unleashed on living beings 
Weapons that spare not even trees
Trees that make the air clean
Trees look pleasing...

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When I was just four,
Baba would walk me through the olive groves,
his land stretching endlessly,
acres of trees—each one a memory,
each one rooted deep in the soil of home.
He’d set up a ladder for me,
let me climb,
picking the dark, ripe olives
from the branches heavy with history.

“Go...

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(It's really hard to ignore the videos of the injured kids... It really is heart wrenching) 

. 


And then the night turned red
And screams were heard
of kids painted in blood 
And a tiny hand waved
From beneath a wrecked home

Kids with names printed on their wrists...

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Upon the backdrop of an arid land, scorched by strife and climate, olive trees weep beneath piles of rubble while the innocent souls of Palestine suffer a cruel fate, burdened by unjustifiable collective punishment. They endure the crippling onslaught imposed on them by a powerful...

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Here We Shall Remain
by Tawfiq Zayyad
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Like twenty impossibilities
in Lydda, Ramla and Galilee ...
here we shall remain.

Like brick walls braced against your chests;
lodged in your throats
like shards of glass
or prickly cactus thorns;
clouding your eyes
like sandstorms.

Here we shall remain,
like brick walls obstructing...

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The Story
by Kamal Nasser
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I will tell you a story ...
a story that lived in the dreams of my people,
a story that comes from the world of tents.
It is a story inspired by hunger and embellished by dark nights of terror.
It...

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Mahmoud Darwish English Translations of Arabic Poems



Palestine
by Mahmoud Darwish
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

This land gives us
all that makes life worthwhile:
April's blushing advances,
the aroma of bread warming at dawn,
a woman haranguing men,
the poetry of Aeschylus,
love's trembling beginnings,
a boulder covered with moss,
mothers who dance to the...

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Fadwa Tuqan has been called the Grand Dame of Palestinian letters and The Poet of Palestine. These are my translations of Fadwa Tuqan poems originally written in Arabic.



Enough for Me
by Fadwa Tuqan 
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Enough for me to lie in the earth,
to...

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Filtering through the empty broken balconies along the rivieras
are the waning cacophonies echoing monotonous songs, 
“Merciless they are to us at the breaking of dawn”
Where life once thrived, we arrived in the city called the strip, 
an open-air prison, an amphitheater without any spectators ...

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