January 7th

I Belong There by Mahmoud Darwish translated by Carolyn Forché and Munir Akash I belong there. I have many memories. I was born as everyone is born. I have a mother, a house with many windows, brothers, friends, and a prison cell with a chilly window! I have a wave snatched by seagulls, a panorama of my own. I have a saturated meadow. In the deep horizon of my word, I have a moon, a bird's sustenance, and an immortal olive tree. I have lived on the land long before swords turned man into prey. I belong there. When heaven mourns for her mother, I return heaven to   her mother. And I cry so that a returning cloud might carry my tears. To break the rules, I have learned all the words needed for a trial by blood. I have learned and dismantled all the words in order to draw from them a    single word: Home.  rom Unfortunately, It Was Paradise by Mahmoud Darwish translated and Edited by Munir Akash and Carolyn Forché with Sinan Antoon and Amira El-Zein. Copyright © 2003 by the Regents of the University of California. Okay, I'm cheating on this one. It would take a lot of patience, digging, and direct instruction for my kids to get into this poem. But I love it. I feel like this would be one of those poems that I read aloud and get blank stares from all of the kids and then groans when I start pontificating about the power of words.  It really is a beautiful poem about what home means, and what it means to belong to a place, and to the memories you have there. Having just left my childhood home in St. Louis and coming back to my (grown-up?) home in Austin, it's a subject really on my mind.