Earth Presses Against Us by Mahmoud Darwish
The suffocation of oppression and the undying nature of resilience
Earth is pressing against us, trapping us in the final passage.
To pass through, we pull off our limbs.
Earth is squeezing us. If only we were its wheat, we might die and yet live.
If only it were our mother so that she might temper us with mercy.
If only we were pictures of rocks held in our dreams like mirrors.
We glimpse faces in their final battle for the soul, of those who will be killed
by the last living among us. We mourn their children's feast.
We saw the faces of those who would throw our children out of the windows
of this last space. A star to burnish our mirrors.
Where should we go after the last border? Where should birds fly after the
Last sky?
Where should plants sleep after the last breath of air?
We write our names with crimson mist!
We end the hymn with our flesh.
Here we will die. Here, in the final passage.
Here or there, our blood will plant olive trees.
Hello and welcome to Words that burn, the podcast taking a closer look at poetry. This week’s poem is one shining a light on the oppression and desperation of immigrants fleeing conflict. Mahmoud’ Darwish’s Earth Presses Against Us comes from his 1986 collection fewer roses.
If you spend any time looking for poetry on the internet, as I do, you may have heard snippets of Darwish’s love poetry and this may have been your first introduction to him, as it was for me. Snippets like
“they asked "do you love her to death?"
i said "speak of her over my grave and watch how she brings me back to life”
Are littered about the internet and actually very difficult to attribute to Darwish himself. In thinking of him as a love poet, we do Darwish a great disservice. During his lifetime Mahmoud Darwish was arguably Palestine's most important poet, constantly writing on and around the oppression taking place in his home country.(Darwish, 2013). Indeed over time it has been argued that he was the most formative in terms of helping Palestinians form and maintain their identities, in the face of active attempts to erase it.(Hamdi, n.d.)
That language of oppression is clear from the poem, Darwish used it so fluently because he was forced to live it .
Mahmoud Darwish was born in 1941 in the Palestinian village of Birweh. If you were to look for it today, you’d find it impossible to find because in 1948 it was demolished by Israeli Forces (Khalidi, 1992). At the age of 8, Darwish became a refugee of that erasure and subsequent conflict.
Over the next few years, Darwish would frequently try to grieve this loss of his home through poetry and lamentation, this made him the frequent target of Israeli police who believed him to be an agitator even as a child.(Khalidi, 1992)
This is a label that would follow him for the rest of his life from place to place (Alcalay, n.d.)
In the 1970’s Darwish began what would become a lifelong exile. Travelling the world in search of refuge and people who would listen to him in Palestine. His documentation of its struggle. The poem struck me as a summation of the sheer emotional turmoil an endless exile like that might take. Not only on Darwish himself but also on hundreds of thousands of other Palestinians that were in a similar position to him.
The weight of his significance in documenting and cataloguing that pain was evidenced in the massive crowds he drew when speaking and reciting poetry.
He was noted as a powerful orator, a man who delivered his poetry with great passion and was able to command the attention of an entire stadium at times. Nigerian poet and playwright Wole Soyinka wrote of one of his recitals:
‘’Then came silence. Mahmoud Darwish began to read. We did not know a word of Arabic, but we heard his voice reach out and sink deep down to pluck the strings of the Palestinian soul.’’(Soyinkah, n.d.)
That plucking of strings is a characteristic of Darwish’s poetry. It’s hard to believe that Palestinian hearing this poem wouldn’t feel some kind of resonance. Darwish’s words are filled with solidarity as he describes what they are all fleeing. I feel it’s important to know that this poem is a translation by by Munir Akash and Carolyn Forché:
Earth is pressing against us, trapping us in the final passage.
To pass through, we pull off our limbs.
Earth is squeezing us. If only we were its wheat, we might die and yet live.
If only it were our mother so that she might temper us with mercy.
If only we were pictures of rocks held in our dreams like mirrors.
There is an immediate sense of suffocation in that first line. Pressure is there and we know from the word trapped there is little chance of escape. The threat is immediate and the speaker's choice of first word, earth, makes it clear that they are not fleeing any kind of human enemy but it feels as though the earth itself has turned against them. Darwish makes it clear from his use of the word us that this is, unfortunately, a shared experience.
The second line, though short, is jarring and gives an immediate sense of the desperation felt by the group of this poem: We pull off our limbs this gross act of self mutilation is a testament to the lengths that this group, whom we can safely assume are a stand-in for Palestinians themselves, will go to to survive and escape their persecution.
The massive enemy of the earth returns again, this time adding to the pressure by squeezing. Whereas in the first line pressing might be something accidental or coincidental, Darwish’s use of the word squeezing, makes it clear that the pressure is very much intentional.
What comes next is an image typical of Darwish’s work, all at once symbolic yet very relatable: If only we were its wheat, we might die and yet live. He references something that takes well to this kind of pressure; wheat. Giving up one form only to be renewed in another: bread. Unfortunately in the speaker's scenario, there is no such hope for renewal. It can only end one way.
The poet continues this series of if only statements, each one wishing for any set of circumstances but the ones they are forced to endure: If only it were our mother so that she might temper us with mercy. If the earth were maternal, as it is so often depicted (Hyner, 2009), they would at least receive some kind of kindness in their pain, some sort of let up in their punishment. The next image took me a while to decipher and I have to admit this is only my best guess: If only we were pictures of rocks held in our dreams like mirrors.
Rocks or stones are the most crucial image here. Academic Kamal Zeidan has written at length about the importance of symbols in forging Palestinian Identity , here is their writing on the importance of stones:
The stone gained a place in Palestinian thinking since the beginning of the first uprising in 1987. This uprising was a kind of national revolution against occupation where the stone was the new rifle that the Palestinian used to defend their land and get their freedom. For that reason, that revolution was named the uprising of stones. Since that time, the stone has become a symbol of resistance and revolution. Many of the Palestinian artists started using that symbol to refer to these meanings.(Zeidan, n.d.)
This consistent depiction of the stone is what's being referenced here, it is a symbol of resistance, depicted over and over. The hope that something small can affect great change. Perhaps Darwish hopes that this group can do the same. I’d love to hear your own interpretations for this line, you can find a link to get in touch in the description.
These three if only statements are a good introduction to a staple of Darwish’s poetic style; Repetition. This was one of Darwish’s tried and tested techniques, gentle insistent repetition can be found in much of his work. Refrains and call-backs at the beginning and end of poems, repeated lines like we see here. It is helpful to remember that in much of the Arabic tradition of poetry, speaking poetry out loud was essential (Ali, 2010) and Darwish truly believed this. His repetition was a way to bring his audience along with him, rhythmically lulling them into the poem's meaning, so much so that sometimes his readings were compared to hypnosis (Hamdi, n.d.) Though this feels vaguely orientalist to me, so take it with a pinch of salt.
In the next section, the humble resistance of the rock evolves into something else:
We glimpse faces in their final battle for the soul, of those who will be killed
by the last living among us. We mourn their children's feast.
We saw the faces of those who would throw our children out of the windows
of this last space. A star to burnish our mirrors.
Here are a list of observations in the midst of fleeing, our speaker notes the expressions of those pursuing: faces in their final battle for the soul. For me, Darwish is describing their perceived enemy, those who seek their eradication, in this case I can only imagine it would be the Israeli Forces. The final battle for the soul described by the poet is a loss of morality. The loss that is almost necessary to carry out the violence against our speaker being described. This observation of the oppressor continues with of those who will be killed by the last living among us. There are hints of resistance in these lines too. The last living among us are those who will resist most ferociously, and may well murder those who seek to murder them. Their children’s feast is a reference to what will be left for the families of those slain. This is a huge amount of empathy shown by Darwish for his enemy. He understands that this culture of violence and eradication takes a toll on both sides. He was well known in his lifetime for aiming his anger at regimes and political institutions as opposed to races or individual people. (Alcalay, n.d.).
Whilst exercising some empathy for them, Darwish makes it clear that he is aware of the immense threat their pursuers represent: We saw the faces of those who would throw our children out of the windows of this last space. These are forces that will think nothing of harming innocents to achieve their goal. This Last Space is a reference to how far they’ve been forced to run, it is the ends of the earth, that same earth that now presses down upon them.
In the use of the word glimpse, and the subsequent barrage of brief images, this section of the poem is given a real sense of hurriedness. We feel the rapid movement of these people, their inability to slow or wait.
The section ends with the phrase: A star to burnish our mirrors. This is the second time that Darwish has mentioned mirrors in his poem. Mirrors frequently appear in Arabic poetry as powerful symbols with multiple layers of meaning. They are often used to reflect on personal and collective experiences, memory, and the complexities of existence. One of the ways they’re most commonly used is as a symbol to examine Identity and Exile, given this episode's poem, that would be the most fitting interpretation here.(Alibabaei, n.d.). As a Palestinian poet who experienced displacement and exile, Darwish's poetry often touched upon the theme of identity. Mirrors may represent the search for a coherent sense of self amidst the turmoil of exile, and the desire to connect with a lost homeland and heritage.
The glimpses of the faces of their enemies burnish their mirrors encouraging the group to continue searching for that strong sense of identity that will be essential to resistance.
This relentless search takes its toll though and the final section sees the poet direct a series of questions:
Where should we go after the last border? Where should birds fly after the
Last sky?
Where should plants sleep after the last breath of air?
We write our names with crimson mist!
We end the hymn with our flesh.
Here we will die. Here, in the final passage.
Here or there, our blood will plant olive trees.
Darwish’s ‘’hypnotic’’ repetition returns as the reader is confronted with three poetic but challenging questions. They are simple questions in their language but their implication only heightens the desperation of the speaker, letting us as the audience know their time is running out; after the last border. The speaker turns to talk of animals then where should birds fly after the last sky. The absurdity of the statement, for how could there be any such thing as a last sky, heightens the inherent absurdity of borders. As though there could be nowhere left for humans to reside on the basis of a man-made construct.
The final rhetorical question; Where should plants sleep after the last breath of air? is a fatalistic one. It is inconceivable that the world might run out of air and yet for the speaker it seems, at this moment, to be a very real prospect.
Each of these questions is a testament to the dire straits and circumstances that, not only Palestinian but all, immigrants find themselves in when forced to flee or emigrate. To many of us reading them they may seem extreme or sensationalist poetic images and yet for many they painfully resonate.
That pain is given form as Darwish turns to the language of mutilation, glimpsed in the second line of the poem, once again.
We write our names with crimson mist, their defiance and will for recognition and identity persists even as they are being torn apart. The term crimson mist has become synonymous with uncontrollable rage and manager, though usually under the name red mist.(Red Mist, n.d.). Though here I feel it references something called the pink mist, which is altogether more macabre. Pink mist is the phrase often used to describe the impact of a bullet hitting a living target. It describes the spray in the wake of the bullet (Phillips, n.d.).
This destruction of the body is continued with: We end the hymn with our flesh, and just like that we understand this entire poem has been a prayer of sorts, a kind of beseechment to divine power, that has only ended in their sacrifice.
The fatalism reaches a crescendo in the final two lines.
Here we will die. Here, in the final passage.
Here or there, our blood will plant olive trees.
The final passage is the last journey of these people that the speaker is among, their fate now a certainty. Darwish does not leave their hymn without hope however. The final line invokes one more important image of Palestine; the olive tree.(Kuttab, 2021)
The olive tree has grown into a nationalist symbol in Palestine over the last few decades. With its use becoming particularly prominent in art. When asked about the significance of the tree, Palestinian painter Sliman Mansour said:
“It represents the steadfastness of the Palestinian people, who are able to live under difficult circumstances… in the same way that the trees can survive and have deep roots in their land so, too, do the Palestinian people.”(Kuttab, 2021)
Darwish himself evidently agreed as, in 1964, he wrote an entire collection titled leaves of the olive tree in which he wrote: “Olive is an evergreen tree; Olive will stay evergreen; Like a shield for the universe.”(Kuttab, 2021)
This perspective on the eternal aspect of the Olive Tree is clearly being used again at the end of the poem. Once more the body is being sacrificed and this time it is the blood that is being offered, though not willingly, the only solace our speaker can draw is that their death will water the land of Palestine, making trees grow where they lie. They may end here with the earth pressed against but the dream of a reclaimed Palestine and Palestinian identity will continue.
Earth Presses Against Us is a poem of persecution, one that is steeped in the imagery of Palestine, indeed it was written by arguably Palestine’s most famous poet(Darwish, 2013) despite that its themes are universal and can be seen in the plight of all refugees even today. For me, it creates a devastatingly claustrophobic account of a life being hunted, of days filled with never ending uncertainty and hours marked in pure desperation. It can be all too easy to see immigrants as statistics and figures, especially when the majority of our exposure to it is reported objectively by news cycles, but in this poem Mahmoud Darwish makes it impossible not to feel the pain of a people.
Esteemed poet Naomi Shihab Nye once wrote:
‘’Mahmoud Darwish is the Essential Breath of the Palestinian people, the eloquent witness of exile and belonging,... What he speaks has been embraced by readers around the world—his in an utterly necessary voice, unforgettable once discovered.’’(Academy of American Poets, 2003)
His necessary voice as she puts it is also the thing that ensures that we as an audience do not forget the plight of those forced to flee a home and that made him essential.
Mahmoud Darwish sadly passed away in 2008.
What did you think of the poem? I’d like to point out as always that this is my interpretation and I’d love to hear yours. You can get in touch with me in a few different ways. Send me an email at wordsthatburnpodcast@gmail.com . Follow me on instagram @wordsthatbrunpodcast or on twitter @wordsthatburn. If you enjoyed today’s episode or know someone else who might please consider sharing it with them directly.
The script for today's episode can be found at the substack link below. Words That Burn is written and produced by me, Benjamin Collopy.
Thanks for taking the time to listen to me once again, hopefully you'll hear from me again soon.
Bibliography
Academy of American Poets. (2003, February 13). Mahmoud Darwish. Poets.org; Poets.org - Academy of American Poets. https://poets.org/poet/mahmoud-darwish
Alcalay, A. (n.d.). Who’s Afraid of Mahmoud Darwish? Paperpile. Retrieved August 6, 2023, from https://paperpile.com/app/p/1281a1ef-b70a-0dc7-aeaa-9ae27fc7c987
Alibabaei, G. (n.d.). THE SYMBOLIC LANGUAGE OF MIRROR IN THE MYSTICAL POEMS AND THE REFLECTION IN ISLAMIC ART. Paperpile. Retrieved August 7, 2023, from https://paperpile.com/app/p/712790ca-bdad-0b74-b176-ae24ba56e1f4
Ali, S. M. (2010). Arabic Literary Salons in the Islamic Middle Ages: Poetry, Public Performance, and the Presentation of the Past. University of Notre Dame Pess.
Darwish, M. (2013). Introduction, Unfortunately, It Was Paradise: Selected Poems. Univ of California Press.
Hamdi, T. (n.d.). Yeats’s Ireland, Darwish's Palestine: The National in the Personal, Mystical, and Mythological. Paperpile. Retrieved August 6, 2023, from https://paperpile.com/app/p/6b9414fc-af69-09c1-a7fa-be20ab9b258d
Hyner, B. H. (2009). Forces of Nature: Natural(-izing) Gender and Gender(-ing) Nature in the Discourses of Western Culture. Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
Khalidi, W. (1992). All that Remains: The Palestinian Villages Occupied and Depopulated by Israel in 1948.
Kuttab, D. (2021, November 27). How the olive tree came to symbolize Palestinian national identity. Arab News. https://www.arabnews.com/node/1976171
Phillips, A. (n.d.). Shooting to Kill: Headshots, Twitch Reflexes, and the Mechropolitics of Video Games. Paperpile. Retrieved August 8, 2023, from https://paperpile.com/app/p/66cd73a7-a12f-071b-9d7a-6c8bd99a9f1b
red mist. (n.d.). Retrieved August 8, 2023, from https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/red-mist
Soyinkah, W. (n.d.). A Night in Ramallah. Paperpile. Retrieved August 6, 2023, from https://paperpile.com/app/p/054e0de2-6cd0-07f2-bb34-fd6409694026
Zeidan, K. (n.d.). Symbols in Traditional and Contemporary Palestinian Art. Paperpile. Retrieved August 6, 2023, from https://paperpile.com/app/p/c64c5b0e-fc88-01c3-9040-9b88dab1f2d5