The Repetition Is Appropriate Because What’s Being Denied Is Country

Darwish turns in his grave, the house
                             where he is not denied a country, 

where olive fruits bruise the grounds
       that have never known death, or dispossession. 

Some say he can still hear the wailing of his people.
                                                But what is the gain 

in speculating what the dead can hear? He died
                        scraping for a country being pulled 

to the other side. Dumb bombs are desecrating
                the living monument of a stolen country. 

Someone says, in a new body molded by hands of God,         
        his spirit, unmoored, has since left his grave 

for paradise. Says he was seen at the foot
                                       of a whimsical olive tree

twirling to the music of his own lute,
                                                    his own groove. 

There is no return for him,
                                                  just composition. 

Darwish is transformed into a dramaturge
                                                 with spry fingers, 

deftly directing the levers of chance
 		and consequence like a consummate Dreamweaver. 

These are not mere quirks
         but attestations. He says, confront the constraints 

of truth not through sheer force
                             but the artful craft of dancing, 

beating the floor with a different kind of triumph.
                      But for the sake of the dying, can I, 

in this moment, borrow the voice of one who’s gone?
                       In the country of sleep, awakened,

no longer a passive onlooker, I want this poem
                               to mutter of reshaping reality, 

not with brushes and pigments of the dead,
           but through the very substance of dreams.