Where commemoration meets celebration This Week in Palestine, October 2011 Schneller School book chapter 2011
Of scorpions, settlers, soldiers, and springs 17/11/2010
Palestinian Olives, 20 October 2009
A Palestinian life, 15/8/2008
Thoughts on Stasis March 11, 2005
Of Arafat, hype and peace Jordan Times, Nov 14, 2004
Hala A Palestinian Story April 14, 2001
Spring yard work May 14, 2001
Pain and Love in the Holy Land 10/7/03
This is What Democracy Looks Like WRMEA Mar 2003
Marching in Washington, Z Magazine
CT Students commemorate land day WRMEA May/June 2002
The Cucumber and the Cactus Northeast Magazine, 7 November 2002
A personal story on refugees Internet disseminated 7/6/00
Hiam's story See also These Kids Need Help And Smiles pictures at http://www.via-dolorosa.net/hiam.htm
Poems by Mazin
Human Interest material written by others
Here we are staying by Tawifiq Zayyad
We Shoot Children Too Dan Almagor Poem
Poems of Ibrahim
A diary of survival in Palestine
Bushra Poem
Thoughts from George Carlin
Humor
The Hollow Men By T. S. Eliot (1925)
I
We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats' feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar
Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;
Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom
Remember us -- if at all -- not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.
II
Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
In death's dream kingdom
These do not appear:
There, the eyes are
Sunlight on a broken column
There, is a tree swinging
And voices are
In the wind's singing
More distant and more solemn
Than a fading star.
Let me be no nearer
In death's dream kingdom
Let me also wear
Such deliberate disguises
Rat's coat, crowskin, crossed staves
In a field
Behaving as the wind behaves
No nearer --
Not that final meeting
In the twilight kingdom
III
This is the dead land
This is cactus land
Here the stone images
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a dead man's hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star.
Is it like this
In death's other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone.
IV
The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms
In this last of meeting places
We grope together
And avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the tumid river
Sightless, unless
The eyes reappear
As the perpetual star
Multifoliate rose
Of death's twilight kingdom
The hope only
Of empty men.
V
Here we go round the prickly pear
Prickly pear prickly pear
Here we go round the prickly pear
At five o'clock in the morning.
Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom
Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow
Life is very long
Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom
For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper. | "HARLEM"
by Black American poet Langston Hughes
What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore--
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over--
like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
OR DOES IT EXPLODE?
(capitals/emphasis by the poet)
-----------------------
After such knowledge; what forgiveness?
Think now
History has many cunning passages,
Contrived corridors
And issue, dedeceives with wispering ambitios
Guides us by vanities.
Think now
She gives when our attention is distracted
And what she gives, she gives with such supple confusion
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time
T. S. Elliot
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