The Butterfly's Burden Quotes

“Sonnet V
I touch you as a lonely violin touches the suburbs of the faraway place
patiently the river asks for its share of the drizzle
and, bit by bit, a tomorrow passing in poems approaches
so I carry faraway's land and it carries me on travel's road

On a mare made of your virtues, my soul weaves
a natural sky made of your shadows, one chrysalis at a time.
I am the son of what you do in the earth, son of my wounds
that have lit up the pomegranate blossoms in your closed-up gardens

Out of jasmine the night's blood streams white. Your perfume,
my weakness and your secret, follows me like a snakebite. And your hair
is a tent of wind autumn in color. I walk along with speech
to the last of the words a bedouin told a pair of doves

I palpate you as a violin palpates the silk of the faraway time
and around me and you sprouts the grass of an ancient place—anew”
― Mahmoud Darwish, The Butterfly's Burden

“I embrace you, until I return to my void,
as an eternal visitor. No life and no
death in what I sense
as a bird passing beyond nature.
when I embrace you…

from “Maybe, Because Winter Is Late”
― Mahmoud Darwish, The Butterfly's Burden