The Most Beautiful Sayings of Mahmoud Darwish on Love
Here are some of the most notable quotes by Mahmoud Darwish regarding love:
- It is my misfortune to forget that the night is long, while it is your fortune to remind me of you until morning.
- Love teaches me not to love, leaving me in the wind’s embrace.
- Those who lack love fear the winter.
- History mocks its victims and their heroes, casting a glance before moving on.
- Love, like death, is an unreturnable promise that never fades away.
- I desire nothing from love but the beginning.
- It is love, our honest deception.
- That is love: I love you when I die, and when I love you, I feel as if I am dying.
- I train my heart to love so that it can accommodate both roses and thorns.
- When love ends, I realize it was never love; true love must be lived, not remembered.
- Love is not merely an idea; it is an emotion that heats, cools, comes, and goes. It manifests in form and shape, possessing more than five senses. Sometimes, it appears to us as an angel with delicate wings capable of lifting us off the ground. Other times, it storms in like a bull, knocking us down before leaving. At other instances, it arrives as a powerful storm whose aftermath we recognize from its destruction. Occasionally, it descends upon us as dewdrops from a wandering cloud. Love has an expiration date, just like life and even canned goods and medications. I prefer the fall of love to be sudden, like a heart attack at the peak of passion, akin to a horse tumbling down a mountain into a ravine.
- I loved you unwillingly, not because you were the most beautiful, but because you were the deepest; often, a lover of beauty is a fool.
- As for me, I will enter the mulberry tree, where a silkworm transforms me into silk thread, passing through the needle of a woman from legends, and then I will fly like a scarf with the wind.
- I only remember my heart when love splits it in two or when it dries from the thirst of love.
- One day, I will become what I wish; one day, I will be a bird, untying my existence from my nonexistence. Every time my wings burn, I draw closer to the truth and rise from the ashes. I am the dialogue of dreamers, detached from my body and self to complete my initial journey towards meaning, consumed by it and then disappearing. I am absence; I am the celestial fugitive.
- We do not have a hand in nostalgia; in distance, we possessed a thousand hands. Peace be upon you; I miss you dearly… And peace be upon me in what I have lost.
Poem: I Want Nothing from Love but the Beginning
I want nothing from love but the beginning, the doves mending
Above the courtyards of my Grenada, this day’s attire,
In the jars, there’s plenty of wine for the feast that awaits us after;
In the songs, there are windows enough to explode the pomegranate.
I leave the jasmine in the vase, leaving my small heart
In my mother’s cupboard, I leave my dream in water, laughing;
I leave the dawn in honey from the figs, I leave my today and yesterday
In the corridor to the orange grove where the doves take flight.
Poem: The Beloved’s Bleeding Anemones
The beloved bleeds anemones;
The land of purple shimmered with his wounds. Its first song: the blood of love spilled by deities.
And its last: blood… O people of Canaan, celebrate
The spring of your land, and ignite.