Nasrallah, I: Rain Inside

A Palestinian poet, Ibrahim Nasrallah is among the foremost poets of his generation. In this collection, Nasrallah describes the suffering of the Palestinians not through a personal lens, but through a universal context. He observes life with a natural human tendency toward a love that can heal, transcend, and transform the pain and sorrow of human experience.

"Taste"

There's the dewy taste of seas and clouds in the dust,

the taste of the expanse and the rain,

of plains, mountains, humans,

of feminity, love, and intrepid oranges,

of childhood and saffron,

of living in my mother's heart,

of travel,

and of your soul and mine.

But my beloved trees steal toward the source

to taste it in solitude, before any of us