And They Don'T Ask… Poem by Mahmoud Darwish

And they don't ask: What comes after death?
Though more intimate with the book of Paradise
than with accounts of the earth, they're preoccupied
with another question: What shall we do
before this death? Near to life, we live
and we don't - as if life were parceled out
from a desert where the haggling gods of property
settle their disputes.
We live beside an ancient dust.
Our lives burden the historian's night:
'Though I make them disappear, they come back to me
from absence.'
Our lives burden the artist:
'I draw them and become one of them, veiled in mist.'
Our lives burden the General:
'How can a ghost still bleed?'
We shall be what we want to be. And we want
a bit of life, not for just anything - but to honor
the resurrection after our death.
Unintentionally, they speak the philosopher's words:
'Death means nothing to us: if we are then he isn't.
Death means nothing to us: if he is then we are not.'
And they have rearranged their dreams
and sleep standing.