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To immigrants and exiles everywhere, the uprooted, the re-rooted, the rootless, And to the trees we left behind, rooted in our memories …
A map is a two-dimensional representation with arbitrary symbols and incised lines that decide who is to be our enemy and who is to be our friend, who deserves our love and who deserves our hatred and who, our sheer indifference.
So I guess it is in my genes, this melancholy I can never quite shake off.
On such nights I felt so much love and affection for him that it hurt. It was in those moments that the difference between the two of us pained me the most. How I lamented that I could not turn my branches into arms to embrace him, my twigs into fingers to caress him, my leaves into a thousand tongues to whisper back his words, and my trunk into a heart to take him in.
Say some soothing words to your fig tree, trust in her and wait for spring.
when you leave your home for unknown shores, you don’t simply carry on as before; a part of you dies inside so that another part can start all over again.
Is that why, when you meet some individuals – just as with some trees – you can’t help feeling that they must be much older than their chronological age?
An eagle doesn’t feed on flies.’
You know what they say, keep the tongue in your mouth a prisoner. Wisdom consists of ten parts: nine parts of silence, one part of words.’
Just as all trees perennially communicate, compete and cooperate, both above and below the ground, so too do stories germinate, grow and come into bloom upon each other’s invisible roots.
He said working-class people of all countries would some day unite to overthrow their common oppressor, the rich,
It’s as if they need to hate and exclude as much as they need to love and embrace. Their
But you can’t say, “Sorry, I’m a poet, I’ll pass.” You don’t say that when there’s so much suffering, inequality, injustice.’
What we think is impossible changes with every generation.’
The cruelty of life rested not only on its injustices, injuries and atrocities, but also in the randomness of it all.
‘S’agapo,’ Chico would croon in Greek, I love you,
Turkish: ‘Aglama ’ – Don’t cry.
Some day this pain will be useful to you.
If you find my husband, please bury him next to me.
If you weep for all the sorrows in this world, in the end you will have no eyes.’
Fight your way out.’
for bravery, a rowan;
My point is, the tree was being strangled by its own roots. Because it was happening under the earth, it was undetectable. If the encircling roots are not found in time, they start putting pressure on the tree and it just becomes too much to bear.’
Her death has nothing to do with the absence of love.