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POEMS FROM PALESTINE              BOULLATA

to sing with a fighter.
Don’t tell me:
I wish I were a shepherd in Yemen
To sing for resurrection.
Don’t tell me:
I wish I were a waiter in Havana
To sing the victories of the op-
pressed.
Don’t tell me:
I wish I were a young porter in
Aswan
To sing for the rocks.
My friend:

The Nile will never flow into the
Volga,
Nor will the Congo or the Jordan
flow into the Euphrates.
Each river has its own springs,
Its own course, and its own life.
Our land, my friend, is no barren
land.
Each land gives birth in due time,
And each fighter will see the dawn.

Mahmud Darweesh

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The text in the image reads:

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For further research in English on Palestinian Arab poetry, see:

1. A. L. Tibawi, “Visions of the Re-
turn: the Palestine Refugees in
Arab Poetry and Art,” The Middle
East Journal (Washington, D.C.,
Fall, 1963) XVII, pp. 507-526.

2. Emile A. Nakhleh, “Wells of Bitter-
ness: A Survey of Israeli-Arab Po-
litical Poetry,” The Palestinian Re-
sistance to Israeli Occupation, ed.
by Nasseer Aruri (Wilmette, Illi-
nois: the Medina University Press
International, 1970), pp. 107-124.

3. Poetry of Resistance in Occupied
Palestine. Trans. by Sulafa Hijjawi,
int. by Ghassan Karafani (Bagh-
dad: Ministry of Culture and Guid-
ance, 1968).

4. Enemy of the Sun: Poetry of Pales-
tinian Resistance, ed. & trans. by
Nasseer Aruri & Edmund Ghareeb
(Washington, D.C.: Drum and
Spear Press, 1970).

5. A Lover from Palestine and Other
Poems, ed. by Abdul Wahab Al
Messiri (Washington, D.C.: Free
Palestine Press, 1970).

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