Early in his long poetic career, Mahmoud Darwish became known as “the poet” of Palestine. Each time I read through Almond Blossoms and Beyond, I become more aware of how deeply tied the words he chooses are to the metaphors and symbolism of Palestine and Palestinians.
One of my favourite poems in the collection is “To Describe an Almond Blossom.” It begins: “To describe an almond blossom no encyclopedia of flowers / is any help to me, no dictionary. / Words carry me off to snares of rhetoric / that wound the sense, and praise the wound they’ve made.” He searches. He questions. He writes: “Neither homeland nor exile are words, / but passions of whiteness in a / description of the almond blossom.” He concludes the poem without having written the national anthem that he set out to write in the 1960s. Palestine is not yet free.
The almond blossom – metaphor of resilience and hope – is a presence in the collection, along with many other symbols: horseman and gazelle, pomegranate blossoms, the olive, bridge, moth, and that is the beginning. These metaphors and symbols are easy to research and doing so will deepen your understanding of place (Palestine) and the loss of place, the anguish of exile.
In reading and rereading the collection, I experience the poems as witness to the diaspora that began in 1948, and of the agony of exile. “Exile” is the title of half the eight sections that structure the book (Exile V to Exile VIII). Each is a long poem occupying pages 49-95. (In a review I wrote on my blog on February 10, 2020, I quoted Carolyn Forché’s definition of witness poetry. You can find it here.)
The poems in Almond Blossoms & Beyond are among the last poems Darwish wrote, and they overflow with the fullness of his passion and the skill of his years.
Kathryn MacDonald 