Back-cover text:
Mahmoud Darwish is regarded as one of the foremost poets of the “resistance poetry” that emerged in occupied Palestine in the 1960s. The experience and feeling of displacement, beginning in childhood, stayed with him throughout his life and shaped the fabric of his poetry.
Darwish carried two roles together: giving voice to the national consciousness of a people deprived of their homeland, and creating a rich new poetic language. For him, both homeland and poetry were a kind of home, to be kept alive in the present and in the imagination.
Why Did You Leave the Horse Alone? is a magnificent house of poetry. In its storylike garden, the horse, the well, mother, father, jasmine, lapis lazuli, the fence, fire, ash, desert, and sea appear side by side. Within it are preserved unforgettable moments from the Palestinian struggle.