John Berger reads from Mahmoud Darwish’s poem ‘MURAL'

One of my very great heroes, John Berger (author of profoundly effecting books in my library ‘G’ a novel and the revolutionary ‘Ways of Seeing’) reading a poem here called ‘Mural’ by Mahmoud Darwish

May close the day with this . . . . 

In this clip, John Berger reads Mahmoud Darwish’s moving poem ‘Mural’, which he himself translated along with Rema Hammami. The full video is almost 5 mins long and you can watch it on YouTube.

There are so many beautiful lines that Darwish addresses to Death in this poem:

“You’ll be the noble hunter who doesn’t kill the gazelle whilst it’s drinking”

“have you time to check out my poem?”

“You are defeated death, by the arts”

“You are defeated by the songs of the land of two rivers”

“an eternity escaped through your cracks”

“wait here while I pack my bag 

I am glad the algorithm is working to my advantage here and a fuller piece (though still only an excerpt it seems) is here below: