The Hoopoe

By Mahmoud Darwish
from I See What I Want to See, 1993

We haven't approached the land of our distant star yet. 
The poem takes us through the needle's eye 
to weave, for space, the aba of the new horizon.
We are captives. Even if our wheat leapt off the fence 
and the swallow from of our broken chains, captives, what we are, what we love and want . . .
But there is a hoopoe within us who dictates his letters to the olive of exile.
Our letters came back to us from our letters, to write anew
what the rain writes of primitive flowers on the stone of distance.
And the journey - the echo travels from and to us. We aren't basil
to return in spring to our little windows. We aren't leaves
for the wind to take us to our coasts. Here or there is a clear line
for wandering. How many years must we raise our dead
as mirrors to the sweet mysterious? How many times
must the wounded carry mountains of salt to find the commandments?
Our letters came back to us from our letters. Here or there is a clear line for shadow. How many seas must we cross inside the desert?
How many tablets must we forget?
How many prophets must we kill at noon?
How many nations must we resemble to become-
a tribe? This road, our road, is the reed upon the words that darn the hem
of the aba between our desolation and the earth, and the earth distances itself
to doze off in our saffron sunset. So let's open
like a palm and lift our time to the G-ds . . .
I am a hoopoe - the guide told the master of things - I search for a lost sky.

We said: What remains of the wilderness is only what the wilderness finds
of us: the remnants of skin over thorn, the warrior’s song to home, and the mouth
of space. Our relics are in front of us. And behind us is absurdity’s shell . . .
I am a hoopoe – the guide told us – then flew with the rays and the dust.
Then our sages asked about the meaning of story and departure:
Where did we come from when our relics are in front of us,
and the willows behind us? From our names we come
to our names, and we hide forgetfulness from our kids. The stags spring from stags
onto the temples. And the birds lay eggs over the comedy of statues. We didn’t ask
why humans weren’t born of trees that permit return. The oracles told us
the hearts are weighed on a scale in ancient Egypt. The oracles told us
the obelisk supports the horizon from falling onto the ages. And that we
will repeat our journey there on the outer darkness. And the oracles told us
the kings are our judges, and the witnesses are our foes. And the soul
is guarded by shepherds. Our journey is a bridge between two rivers,
and we weren’t born to be erased, though life obliterates . . .
I am a hoopoe – the guide said – I will be guided to the spring if vegetation dries.
We said: We aren’t birds. He said: You won’t reach Him, all is His,
and all is within Him, He’s in everything, search for Him if you want to find Him,
He is within Him. We said: We aren’t birds to fly. He said: My wings are my time,
and passion is passion’s fire, so burn to cast the place’s body off yourselves.
We said: Did you return from Sheba to take us to a new Sheba? Our letters
came back to us from our letters but you didn’t return . . . you didn’t.
And in Greece you didn’t comprehend Aristophanes,
didn’t find the city in the city. You didn’t
find the house of compassion to wrap us up in the silk of serenity.
You didn’t attain the meaning, so the poets’ obsession enchanted you: “Fly,
daughters of my feathers, birds of the plains and wadis, fly
swiftly fly toward my wings and toward my voice.” There is a yearning
in us to fly in our passions, but humans aren’t birds to fly . . .
Hoopoe of words, when you hatch the meaning and the birds
snatch us from language, son of strain, when the butterfly
splits from its elements and feeling resides it, dissolve our clay,
for the light to cleave the image of things. Soar and clarify
the distance between what we were and what will be our final present.
We move away, but end up near our truth and the walls of our estrangement.
Passage is our obsession. We’re the duality of earth-sky, sky-earth
and around us are fence and fence. So what’s behind the fence?
Adam was taught all the names for the grand secret to bloom,
and the secret is our journey to the secretive. Humans are birds that don’t fly . . .
I am a hoopoe – the guide said – and below us is Noah’s flood. Babylon.
Petrified remains. The vapor of the nations’ call to water.
Skeletons and an end like a beginning to an end.
We said: Soar, for the murderer to forget his victims.
Soar above us. Soar for the creator to forget his creation, his things,
and the names in the myth of creation that we exchange.
-Did you know all this beforehand, hoopoe?
-I knew that a volcano would draw the new image of the universe.
-Yet you, postman of the earth, said nothing. I tried . . . We know
there are enough ghosts in the hoopoe to make him search in the graveyards
for his beloved . . . he had a mother, and a south that settles on his flight.
He had the myth of speculation that is crowned with water . . . and among his paths
there are a king and a woman . . . and an army guarding the two juvenile bodies
from our dreams. We have enough of the desert
to grant the hoopoe the rein to our mirage and clouds.
We have enough fragility to hand over to him our sleep’s sleep.
Take us, hoopoe, our tongues are puzzled, how do we praise
the One who asked for praise when His praise is within Him.
All is within Him for all. We accepted that
we are humans in this desert, and we dissolved into love. Where
is our palm tree so we’ll find our hearts in the dates?
And G-d is more beautiful than the road to G-d. But those who travel
don’t return from a wandering to be lost in another wandering!
They know the road is the arrival at the beginning of the impossible road.
Hoopoe of secrets, struggle, for us to witness our love in the beloved.
It’s an eternal journey, this search for the adjective of the One who has no
adjective. His adjectives are free from our description and His traits. Take us high.
What remains of us is our journey to Him. To Him
we plead what we endure in departure . . .
Our blood is His nations’ wine over the marble and on the supper table.
Hoopoe, “There is no you but you; so steal us to you if you please, and guide us
one day to the quick earth, before we spin in the bottomless pit, guide us
one day to trees we were secretly born under to hide our shadow,
guide us to childhood. To doves that once faked what they were to disgrace us.
The children grew up but didn’t fly like the doves. How we wish. We wish. Perhaps
we’ll fly one day . . . humans are birds that don’t fly. And the earth
is larger when we’re ignorant, smaller when we know-our ignorance.
But we’re the descendants of this clay, and the devil of fire tries, as we do,
to attain the nearby secrets, to burn us and burn our minds.

Yet the mind is only smoke, let it get lost! The hearts will guide us.
So take us, hoopoe of secrets, to our vanishing through His vanishing.
Take us high then bring us down to bid our mother farewell.
Endlessly waiting for our horses, she wants to die when light breaks, or live
for Nishapur as a widow who adorns our nights.
She “wants only G-d from G-d” . . . take us then!
Love is not to attain the beloved, the hoopoe said:
On a flute’s echo a lover sent the mare of absence
for his woman and abridged the road and said: I am she. And she
is the “I” unraveling from despair toward hope, to return me to despair.
And my roads to her doors are endless . . . and my “I” flew “so the only I is I . . . “
And the nations’ roads to the same old springs are endless!
We said: The canons will become complete
When we get past this archipelago and free the captives from the tablets.
Let the void sit in its arcade so the human in us can complete the migration . . .
Who are these flutes looking for in the forests? We are the strangers.
We are the folk of the abandoned temple, abandoned atop our white horses—
the reed sprouts over us and meteors flash above us, we search for our final station.
There’s no earth left where we haven’t built an exile for our small tent.
Are we the skin of the earth? Who are the words looking for inside us?
Are these the words that brought us to the court of vision in the underworld?
The words that built the temples to tame its desolate beast with image and psalm?
Our relics are in front of us. And behind us. Here and there. And the oracles
The city worships the ancestors in ancient China. The oracles told us:
The ancestors take their throne to the holy grave – they take
the girls as wives and the war captives as guards. The oracles told us:
Divinity is the twin of man in ancient India. The oracles told us
what the creatures told us: “You are also who He is” . . . although we didn’t
raise our fig tree for the comers from the south to hang us on it.
Are we the skin of the earth? We used to bite the rock and open-
a space for the jasmine. We used to seek refuge in G-d from his guards and wars.
We used to believe what we learned of the words. Poetry used to descend –
from the fruits of our nights, and lead our goats to the pastures on the raisin trail.
The dawn was blue, soft, and moist. And when we dreamt we used to be content
with the borders of our houses: we would see honey on the honeycomb, then
gather it, see the square of a sesame seed complete in our sleep, then sift it, see
what we would see at dawn. Dream was the lover’s handkerchief.
But we didn’t raise our fig tree for the comers from the south to hang us on it.
I am a hoopoe – the guide replied – then flew . . . and the words flew-
from us. The Flood came before us. We didn’t take off the clothes of the earth –
the Flood came before us. We hadn’t begun the self wars yet. It came before us.
We hadn’t harvested the barley of our yellow fields. It came before us.
We hadn’t burnished our stones with a ram’s horn, the Flood
came before us. We hadn’t despaired of apples. The sad mother would bear
brothers from our flesh, not from the chestnut trunk, nor
from iron. The sad mother would bear brothers to erect the exile
of anthem. The sad mother would bear brothers to dwell
in the palm fronds, if they want, or on the plains of our horses. And she would bear
brothers who anoint Abel king of the throne of dust.
But our journey to forgetfulness has turned long. And the veil ahead of us masks
the veil. Perhaps the mid-road is the road to a road of clouds.
Perhaps we are, hoopoe of secrets, ghosts searching for ruins?
The hoopoe said: Leave your bodies and follow me, leave the earth – the mirage
and follow me. And leave your names. Don’t ask me for an answer.

The answer is the road and the only road is to vanish in the fog.
We asked: Are you under the spell of al-Attar?
-He spoke to me then went into the belly of Passion’s Wadi.
We asked: Did al-Ma’arri stop by the Wadi of Knowledge?
-His road is the absurd. We asked: And Ibn Sina . . . did he answer
your question and did he see you? – I see through the heart, not through
philosophy. Are you a Sufi then? -I am a hoopoe. I have no want. “I want
not to want” . . . then the hoopoe disappeared into yearning: O love,
you have tormented us. From travel to travel you send us in vain. You have
tormented us and estranged us from our kin, from our water and air. You have
corrupted us. Emptied the hours of sunset from the sunset. Dispossessed us
of our first words. Robbed the peach tree of our days, dispossessed our days. O love,
you have tormented us, and robbed us. Estranged us from all things and veiled
yourself with autumn leaves. You have robbed us, love. Left not a little
thing for us to search for you in it, or to kiss its shadow, so leave
for us an ear of wheat within the soul that loves you more. Don’t break the glass
of the universe around our calling. Don’t fret. Don’t clamor. Be calm
for a while so we can see the elements in you as they lift their total wedding
toward you. Approach us so we can realize for once: Do we deserve
to be the slaves of your hidden shudder? Don’t scatter
what remains of our sky’s rubble. O love, you have tormented us,
O gift, you have dispersed us to guide our unknown toward rising . . .
this unknown is not ours and the river’s mouth is not ours,
and life rises before us like leaves of ancient cypress, to lead
longing toward longing. You have tormented us, love, made us absent
from ourselves, and dispossessed our names . . .
Then, intoxicated, the hoopoe reappeared and said: Fly just to fly.

We said: We’re only lovers. We have tired of the whiteness of love, we long
for a mother, a dry land, a parent. Are we who we were and who we’ll be?
He said: Unite on every path and vaporize to reach the One
whom the senses cannot reach. Each heart
is a universe of secrets. Fly just to fly. We said: We are only lovers,
we have often died and been elated. We are only lovers. Longing
is exile. Our love is exile. And our wine is exile. And exile
is the history of this heart. We have often said to the scent of the place: Petrify
so we can sleep. We have often told the trees of the place to strip off
the ornament of invasions so we can find the place.
And non-place is the place when its soul becomes remote from its history . . .
Exile is the soul that distances us from our land, toward the beloved.
Exile is the land that distances us from our soul, toward the stranger.
No sword remains that hasn’t sheathed itself in our flesh.
And our enemy-brothers saddled the enemy’s horses to exit our dreams.
The past is exile: we plucked the plums of our joy off the barren summer.
Thoughts are exile: we watched tomorrow beneath the windows then broke through
our present’s walls to reach it, but it became the past in a soldier’s ancient shield.
And poetry is exile when we dream then forget where we were when we waken.
Do we deserve a gazelle? Hoopoe of secrets,
take us to our endless tomorrow! Hang our time over the vastness. Take us high.
All of nature is soul, and the earth appears from here
like a breast for the grand shudder, and the horses of wind are our vessel . . .
So birds, O birds, fly just to fly, all of nature is soul. Ana encircle
your fascination with the yellow hand, your sun, and dissolve. Then turn around
after you’ve burned, and head toward the land, your land,
to illuminate the tunnel of the solid question about this existence and about
the little wall of time. All of nature is soul, and soul is the body’s last dance.
Fly higher than flight . . . higher than your sky . . . just to fly, higher
than the grand love . . . than the sacred . . . than the divine and the sensuous.
Liberate yourself from all the wings of questions about beginning and destiny.
The universe is smaller than a butterfly’s wing in the courtyard of the large heart.
In a grain of wheat we met, then parted in bread and in the journey.
Who are we in this anthem that we should roof the desert with this copious rain?
Who are we in this anthem that we should free the living
from the captivity of graves? Fly with your swift wings, birds, on squalls of silk.
You may fly as our elation. The universal echo will call to you: Fly
to attain the flash of vision. But we will descend onto ourselves,
and if we waken, we will return to visit a time that wasn’t enough
for our happiness or for the climate of Resurrection.
Who are we in this anthem that we should meet its antithesis as a door to a wall?
And what good is our idea without humans since we are made of fire and light?
I am a hoopoe, the guide replied. And we said: We are a flock of birds, words
are fed up with us and we with them, we’re full of thirst, and echo has scattered us.
For how much longer will we fly? The drunkard hoopoe said: Our goal is the vastness.
We said: And what’s behind it? He said: Vastness after vastness after vastness.
We said: We’re tired. He said: You won’t find a pine tree to rest on. What you ask
of descent is in vain, so soar just to soar. We said: How about tomorrow,
we’ll fly again tomorrow . . . the earth will still be there, a ripened breast suckled
by the clouds, a gold that scratches the blue shudder around our homes.
The earth has everything – even if we don’t know it. We shall return when we return
to see it with our hoopoe’s eyes that have possessed our eyes.
Salaam upon the earth, salaam unto it . . .
It has the bed of the universe with cotton sheets made of vision and clouds.

It sleeps on arms of water as owner of its image and ours. And it has
a small moon that combs its shadow like a servant. And the moon passes
among our hearts frightened of exile and of the fate of myth,
then darkness illuminates it like a vigil for the state of the self near the miracles.
Is this what words are born out of, for clay
to become man? Did we know the earth to forget it and forget
the fish of childhood around its navel? Do we see from afar what we don’t see
when near? The days were often our fortresses on the string of language.
The rivers were often our flutes though we didn’t notice. And the marble
often imprisoned some of our angels but we never knew it. And Egypt and Syria
have often lost their way. There’s a land to the land
above which our hoopoe was captive. There’s a soul to the land –
the wind scattered it. And Noah didn’t leave all the messages for us.
Christ walked to Galilee and the wounds in us clapped. Here, the doves
are the words of our dead. Here, the Babylonian ruins
are a mole in our journey’s armpit. Here an apple body swims in the galaxy.
And water is that body’s belt as it flows along eternity,
embodied in our eulogies, and then returns to itself
like a mother who covers us with her naked fur of longing, hides what we’ve done
to the lung and the fire of her rose, hides our journey’s war, and what the sword
has done to the map of grass around the shores of the sacred feathers.
Our mother is our mother. The Athenians’ mother.
The ancient Persians’ mother. Plato’s, Zaradasht’s, Plotinus’s,
Suhrwardi’s, and everyone’s mother. Each child is a master in his mother.
The beginning and end are hers. As if she is what she desires to be: birth.
And if she desires, she is also the forbidden death.
You fed and nourished us, Mother, to feed our children, so when is the weaning?

O spider of love. Death is a murder. We love you, O how we love you,
grant us mercy. Don’t kill us a second time and don’t give birth to the serpents
near the Tigris . . . and let us walk on the gazelles of your waist
near your waist, the air is the dwelling place.
Lure us as the mischievous partridge is lured to the nets, and embrace us.
Were you there before our migration?
The passion of wandering changes us into a poem
that has opened its windows so the pigeons can complete the poem
then carry it as a meaning that brings back the sap to the invisible
trees on the banks of our souls . . .
Fly, then, just to fly in the courtyards of this heart, fly.
What good is our idea without the human since we are made of clay and light?
Did you know, hoopoe, what crown was on your head?
The hoopoe replied: My mother’s grave. When I fly carrying secrets and news,
my mother is a festival on my head . . .
He’s a hoopoe, we said, he’s the guide and what’s in him is in us, hung by time
like a bell for the wadis. Yet the place becomes narrow in vision and time breaks.
What do you see, hoopoe . . . what do you see in the faraway image of shadow?

-I see the shadow of His image over us, so let’s soar to see Him, He is the only He:
“O heart . . . my mother and sister,” my wife, pour yourself out to see Him . . .
But after all, our hoopoe, we said, is just a hoopoe . . .
Water has a throne that rises beneath the drought, and the holm oaks rise also.
Water has the color of the field when the zephyr of dawn lifts it on the horses’ backs.
Water has the taste of the gift of song lunging from memory’s garden.
Water has the scent of the beloved on the marble, increasing our thirst and stupor.
Water has the shape of sunrise brevity when it splits us in two: human and bird.
And our hoopoe has horses of water that rise under his drought as the scepter rises.

And our hoopoe . . . has a time he once carried, and he once had a tongue.
And our hoopoe . . . has a land he once carried as messages to the distant heavens.
There’s no religion the hoopoe hasn’t offered to the creatures as a departure to G-d.
There’s no love that hasn’t tormented the hoopoe
with breaking through a lover to his other. And the hoopoe is always a traveler.
Who are you in this anthem? I am the guide, he said.
And the hoopoe is always a traveler. Who are you in this anthem?
I am departure, he said. “O heart . . . my mother and sister,” pour yourself out
so the impossible can see you – and for you to see it,
and take me, both of you, to my final mirror. Our hoopoe said this then flew . . .
Are we what we were? There are trees on our ruins and a beautiful moon
in our travel. And we have a life over there in others’ lives.
Yet we were coerced into the orphaned Samarkand.
We don’t have a king to bring back. The days left
to us what the flute bequeathed of the days . . . the nearest of them is farthest.
And we have of rain what the lablab ivy has.
We are now what we were, we have come back
coerced to the myths that didn’t expand for our arrival, and we organize
our days around our anthem. And we have temples over there, and here
we have a G-d whose martyrs praise.
And we have flowers of night musk the day shuts out.
And we have a life in others’ lives. We have oil and wheat –
we didn’t make our tent out of our willows, we didn’t make G-ds
out of sulfur for the soldiers to come and worship. We found everything
ready: our broken names in the jars
of clay . . . our women’s tears of old berry stains
on the garments . . . our old hunting rifles . . . and a previous festival
we can’t retrieve. The wasteland is packed with traces of human absence.
And it seems we were here once. It seems
there are enough tools here to pitch a tent above the wind.
And the Flood has no tattoos on the wrinkles of the mountain with green borders.
But there are a thousand nations in us that have passed between song and spear.
We came to learn that we came to return from an absence we don’t desire.
And we have a life we haven’t yet tried.
And an immortal salt that hasn’t immortalized who we are.
And we have steps no one before us has taken . . . so fly,
fly, O birds, in the courtyards of this heart, fly,
and gather around our hoopoe, and fly . . . just . . . to fly!