Book Review: Almond Blossoms and Beyond

Almond Blossoms and Beyond by Mahmoud Darwish;

translated by Mohammad Shaheen

Interlink Books | 2024 | Paperback, $20

5 stars

I am so grateful for poetry in translation, as it allows me to experience writing from other languages, other worlds. Language, in many ways, influences the way we perceive the world, and the way we can communicate our experiences. I’m grateful to experience writing from perspectives formed through a different lens than my own. 

Mahmoud Darwish, considered the most important contemporary Palestinian poet, writes of love, longing, loss, death, war, occupation… he writes with direct honesty, literal even when he uses metaphor, his figurative language more than a pretty turn of phrase. 

For example, in “As If I Were Joyful” he writes of returning to an empty home, and while we could read it as the metaphor of returning to a place that was once familiar, and has now become strange, we can also read this poem as the literal return to a home from which one has been exiled, the return to an occupied homeland where he now remembers himself. 

I asked, Why then did I come back?  And I apologized to myself--I forgot about you,  go away! But I could not.” (17-19)

I said, I have changed. To die at home is better than to be crushed by a car in the street, in an empty square. (23-25)

Many of his poems carry the sense of longing and loss, whether he writes of home or of love. He writes, also, of the connection we have to each other, and what we owe to each other in this life. In “Think of Others” he asks us to think of animals, of the land, of each other. 

As you prepare your breakfast, think of others (do not forget the pigeon’s food).  As you wage your wars, think of others (do not forget those who seek peace). As you pay your water bill, think of others (those who are nursed by clouds). As you return home, to your home, think of others (do not forget the people of the camps). As you sleep and count the stars, think of others (those who have nowhere to sleep). As you express yourself in metaphor, think of others (those who have lost the right to speak). As you think of others far away, think of yourself (say: If only I were a candle in the dark).