Two Discourses
He said to me:

And nothing will heal me

except a song

or a prayer

from the land of the Māori.



***



He said to me:

I am these convulsions

in the hakas of the Māori,

I am these convulsions,

so go on,

make of my words what you will…



 Translator’s Note: These poems, which are called Mukhatabat (“discourses”) in Arabic, are modeled after a genre

of text called Mukhatabat, the most famous of which were written by the Sufi mystic Al-Niffari (died circa 965 CE).

Those texts by Al-Niffari are spiritual discourses of sorts, with each text beginning with the words “He said to me”;

the “He” refers to God or the spiritual presence or the higher Self of Al-Niffari himself.

Here, Najwan Darwish not only diversifies the themes of this genre but also performs a radical shift,

grounding it entirely in the earthly realm and reconciling the spiritual with the political. ↩