Comments on A Burning Patience: And did you touch the dream

I rejoice and am delighted to meet someone who not...

2007-03-21T08:40:00.000-05:00

I rejoice and am delighted to meet someone who not only has an apparent love of poetry but a deep thinker and great essayist as well! Having passed the anniversary marker of the beginning of our occupation of Iraq having the opportunity to be introduced to a new poet of striking voice and (Aharon Shabtai and Wislawa Szymborska come to mind) mythical, humanitarian scope like Mahmoud Darwish! He is exactly what I needed. Thank you!

I have been reading and re-reading Darwish’s amazing “Under Siege” …

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/under-siege/

… and wonder what my life must have been like an hour ago when I had never heard of this poem since everything is changed now. I think when a poet (and joy of joys a single poem!) changes you forever then that is probably one of the highest marks we can give poetry. So I do not ask this as a rhetorical question but in all seriousness; how can I not weep in amazement when I read this poem? How can I not?

Our cups of coffee. Birds green trees
In the blue shade, the sun gambols from one wall
To another like a gazelle
The water in the clouds has the unlimited shape of what is left to us
Of the sky. And other things of suspended memories
Reveal that this morning is powerful and splendid,
And that we are the guests of eternity.

Really interesting post, Lyle. Barring anything un...

2007-03-20T05:26:00.000-05:00

Really interesting post, Lyle. Barring anything unforeseen, a longtime online friend of mine from Cairo ,who'll be visiting his two sons who now live here on the West Coast, will also visit me for a couple of days during that time. He used to write poetry and knows some English, too, having lived here for two years when younger. It'll be interesting to talk about differences in our cultures in person.

Great essay. May be one of my favs of yours. In a ...

2007-03-16T12:23:00.000-05:00

Great essay. May be one of my favs of yours.

In a world and a time in which life is ever increasingly defined by the multiple struggles, now clandestine and with stubborn patience, now open and explosive, of the billions of us -- we who work the work of all days -- to halt the march of the corporate empires of burning earth and genocide, we find our voices one by one and many by many.

Great paragraph. Enjoyed this.