Darwish's work has particular relevance to our struggles for justice in Africa. His poems have been in my mind frequently during the past 10 months, through the stolen elections in Kenya and Zimbabwe, the crises of governance across the continent, the growing volume of protest against starvation and destitution inflicted by rising prices of food and fuel.

On police and state violence against civil society activists:

And they asked him:
Why do you sing?
And he answered, as they seized him:
I sing because I sing…

And they searched his chest
But could only find his heart
And they searched his heart
But could only find his people
And they searched his voice
But could only find his grief
And they searched his grief
But could only find his prison
And they searched his prison
But could only see themselves in chains

From Poem Of The Land,Mahmoud Darwish
(Written to commemorate five Palestinian girls killed by the Israelis, in connection with a demonstration on March 30, 1976, to protest Israeli seizures of Arab land).

On the flawed and compromised outcomes of "mediation agreements" in Kenya and Zimbabwe, and the betrayals of opposition parties when offered a piece of the cake:

If you truly love me, place my dream
in my hands and say to the Son of Mary,
"Lord, how could you have made us endure what you endured yourself?
Will there be enough justice left over
for us to be just ourselves tomorrow?"

Mahmoud Darwish, From: Night That Overflows My Body,

And on the ongoing refusal of colleagues in the movement to succumb to despair, despite every frustration:

How many seas should we cross in the desert?
How many tablets should we leave behind?
How many prophets should we kill at high noon?
How many nations should we resemble before we become a tribe?
This path - our path - is a tapestry of words.
With it we mend the hem of the aba stretched between our solitude
and the vagrant land sleeping in our saffron dusk.
So let's be an open hand, offering our time to the gods.

Mahmoud Darwish, The Hoopoe

* Kenyan poet and activist, Shailja Patel, will lead a commemoration of Darwish at the Internazionale Festival, Ferrara, Italy, on October 5th

* The Kenya-PEN chapter will also host a Darwish Memorial Reading in Nairobi on October 5th. Please contact Kenya-PEN president, Philo Ikonya, [email][email protected] for details.