Renowned Palestinian Poet Mahmoud Darwish

It is with humility and sorrow that Copper Canyon Press mourns the passing of Mahmoud Darwish, beloved Palestinian poet who embraced life with heart and uncompromised resolve.

"as for me, I will enter the mulberry trees
where the silkworm makes me into a silk thread,
then I'll enter a woman's needle in
one of the myths
and fly like a shawl with the wind..."

Mahmoud Darwish from "Don't Apologize for what You've Done"
The Butterfly's Burden
Translated by Fady Joudah

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Stephen Kuusisto

Serenade

What can I tell you
Except that birds
Came to me that summer
As if I were St. Jerome
Instead of the crippled kid
Who spent his time alone.

I was a muddy rat.
I spoke across the water.
I moved with my hands.

Blackbirds whistled
Through the dry creek bed.
The cemetery called the purple martins.

The boy I speak of
Went from fence to stone
Very like a bird–
And like a bird
He would listen
In the tall grass.

When the birds came
He rose through the tatter of clouds.
The boy with two faces, he flew through clouds.
The kid who couldn't see, he flew right up.
His parents came, they banged on pots and pans;
They hoped to get him back to earth.
But they were far below
And the boy was in the sky of verities.

Thie child had passed away,
Had arrived at a kind of end,
A bird place,
Where life hands on a spin.

You can live in matchless grace.