Rebel Girl's Poetry Corner: "long live life"

From this week's New Yorker, a poem by Mamoud Darwish, the Palestinian poet who died earlier this month.

Here the Birds’ Journey Ends

Here the birds’ journey ends, our journey, the journey of words,

and after us there will be a horizon for the new birds.

We are the ones who forge the sky’s copper, the sky that will carve roads

after us and make amends with our names above the distant cloud slopes.

Soon we will descend the widow’s descent in the memory fields

and raise our tent to the final winds: blow, for the poem to live, and blow

on the poem’s road. After us, the plants will grow and grow

over roads only we have walked and our obstinate steps inaugurated.

And we will etch on the final rocks, “Long live life, long live life,”

and fall into ourselves. And after us there’ll be a horizon for the new birds.

(Translated, from the Arabic, by Fady Joudah.)