Black Agenda Report
Black Agenda Report
News, commentary and analysis from the black left.

  • Home
  • Africa
  • African America
  • Education
  • Environment
  • International
  • Media and Culture
  • Political Economy
  • Radio
  • US Politics
  • War and Empire
  • omnibus

POEM: The Earth Is Closing On Us, Mahmoud Darwish, 1995
Editors, The Black Agenda Review
23 Oct 2024
Gaza on fire

“Where should we go after the last frontiers? Where should the birds fly after the last sky?”

We are at a loss for words. We have lost all language. What words can describe the horrors and sorrows of a genocide, unremittingly live streamed, that has continued for more than a year? What language can convey the warped and barbaric white supremacist logics that justify the industrial massacre of more than 200,000 people, including the cruel starvation of entire families and the savage dismembering of children, of infants? What language can explain the ethnic cleansing of more than a million people from their lands, their homeland? Words have failed. Language has disintegrated. We are left with nothing more coherent than a clotted knar of grief and rage.

Once again, only the poets can respond to this state of aphasia. Only the poets can find the words beyond words, the language beyond language that can capture the holocaust, this apocalypse of the Palestinians, this fetid planet at its civilizational nadir. We are grateful, then, for the words of the late Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish (13 March 1941 – 9 August 2008), whose lines have long borne eloquent witness to the suffering of his people, and who has given the world the ledger of grief from which can be written a history of resistance, and of victory. Without further comment, we reprint Mahmoud Darwish’s immortal poem, “The Earth Is Closing In On Us.”

The Earth Is Closing In On Us

Mahmoud Darwish

The Earth is closing on us
pushing us through the last passage
and we tear off our limbs to pass through.
The Earth is squeezing us.
I wish we were its wheat
so we could die and live again.
I wish the Earth was our mother
so she'd be kind to us.
I wish we were pictures on the rocks
for our dreams to carry as mirrors.
We saw the faces of those who will throw
our children out of the window of this last space.
Our star will hang up mirrors.
Where should we go after the last frontiers?
Where should the birds fly after the last sky?
Where should the plants sleep after the last breath of air?
We will write our names with scarlet steam.
We will cut off the hand of the song to be finished by our flesh.
We will die here, here in the last passage.
Here and here our blood will plant its olive tree.

Palestine
Gaza

Do you need and appreciate Black Agenda Report articles. Please click on the DONATE icon, and help us out, if you can.


Related Stories

North-South Project for People(s)-Centered Human Rights , Black Alliance For Peace
The Black Alliance for Peace Calls for International Popular Mobilizations to Stop Israel’s Genocidal Campaign to Starve Palestinians to Death!
30 April 2025
The Israeli state’s starvation campaign in Gaza—backed by the U.S. and Europe—is a livestreamed genocide.
​​​​​​​ Ajamu Baraka, BAR editor and columnist
U.S. and Israel Gangsterism Has Created a Hobbesian International State of Nature
23 April 2025
Gaza has exposed the West’s ‘human rights’ as a colonial farce.
Nora Barrows-Friedman
Rafah “obliterated” by Israel’s attacks
16 April 2025
Israel is intensifying its genocidal assault on Gaza—starving civilians, bombing hospitals, and burning journalists alive.
Palestine Chronicle Staff
Sole Survivor of ‘Paramedics Massacre’ in Rafah Exposes Israeli War Crime
09 April 2025
Monther Abed, the sole survivor of the Israeli attack on paramedics in Rafah, reveals the details of the crime in which 15 humanitarian workers
Jehad Abusalim
"It Is Neither Death, Nor Suicide"
09 April 2025
For 76 years, Gaza has been has been the defiant heart of Palestinian resistance.
Palestine Chronicle Staff
ICRC, PRCS Condemn Israel’s Killing of Eight Medics, Five Rescuers in Gaza
02 April 2025
The medics who were killed were identified as Mustafa Khafaja, Ezzedine Sha’at, Saleh Moammar, Rifaat Radwan, Mohammad Behloul, Ashraf Abu Labd
Palestine Chronicle Staff
Gaza Journalists Hossam Shabat, Mohammed Mansour Killed in Israeli Airstrikes
25 March 2025
Journalists Hossam Shabat and Mohammed Mansour were killed in targeted Israeli airstrikes, as the death toll among media workers continues to r
​​​​​​​ Ajamu Baraka, BAR editor and columnist
Israeli Fascism Is Fueled by U.S. and European White Supremacy
19 March 2025
The unlimited support western powers give to Israel is a continuation of colonial violence and white supremacy. The U.S.
Young child in Gaza
Nora Barrows-Friedman
Israel is Still Killing Three People Per Day in Gaza
19 March 2025
Israel has violated its ceasefire agreement with Hamas.
Sharon Zhang
Israel Wiped Out at Least 1,200 Entire Families in Gaza, Analysis Finds
12 March 2025
The horrible toll of Israel's genocide in Gaza is still being revealed.

More Stories


  • BAR Radio Logo
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
    Black Agenda Radio May 9, 2025
    09 May 2025
    In this week’s segment, we discuss the 80th anniversary of victory in Europe in World War II, and the disinformation that centers on the U.S.'s role and dismisses the pivotal Soviet role in that…
  • Book: The Rebirth of the African Phoenix
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
    The Rebirth of the African Phoenix: A View from Babylon
    09 May 2025
    Roger McKenzie is the international editor of the UK-based Morning Star, the only English-language socialist daily newspaper in the world. He joins us from Oxford to discuss his new book, “The…
  • ww2
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
    Bruce Dixon: US Fake History of World War II Underlies Permanent Bipartisan Hostility Toward Russia
    09 May 2025
    The late Bruce Dixon was a co-founder and managing editor of Black Agenda Report. In 2018, he provided this commentary entitled, "US Fake History of World War II Underlies Permanent Bipartisan…
  • Nakba
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
    The Meaning of Nakba Day
    09 May 2025
    Nadiah Alyafai is a member of the US Palestinian Community Network chapter in Chicago and she joins us to discuss why the public must be aware of the Nakba and the continuity of Palestinian…
  • Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist
    Ryan Coogler, Shedeur Sanders, Karmelo Anthony, and Rodney Hinton, Jr
    07 May 2025
    Black people who are among the rich and famous garner praise and love, and so do those who are in distress. But concerns for the masses of people and their struggles are often missing.
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us