First Published: 2008-08-13

‘Send me an embarrassed tune written with your silent eyes’, recites Iqbal Tamimi in dedication to Palestinian national poet Mahmud Darwish.

Leave your sin on my palm before you go

We came from the same tribe of drifters

I left my head behind

Dangling in the well

Swinging with the horsing doors

Can you …please!

Leave on my palm your sin before you go

Or send me

An embarrassed tune

Written with your silent eyes

That we have made a hole

In that ugly apartheid wall

And that I have left behind a poem

Sunbathing with your olive trees in the dunes

And that we

Have paved the way

For armies of wise shoes

Because the feet colluded with heads

Did not know how to choose

And that I…

Have fallen between the letters

Got stuck between two commas

Because I was the shepherd of my wild dream

I was only declaring my fears to strangers

Rebelling against the snow

Shivering whenever I read a map

That does not lead home

Or whenever a nation of ignorance

Called my country by a pseudonom

Last night

I saw love sneaking from the crack of my dream

Rarely do I commit such follies

So.. if you don’t mind..

Please

Leave your algaes on my shirt

It might just bloom some peace

Iqbal Tamimi is a Palestinian journalist, researcher and poet from Hebron, currently working in the UK.