I have the wisdom of one condemned to die,
I possess nothing so nothing can possess me
and have written my will in my own blood:
'O inhabitants of my song: trust in water'
and I sleep pierced and crowned by my tomorrow…
I dreamed the earth's heart is greater
than its map,
more clear than its mirrors
and my gallows.
I was lost in a white cloud that carried me up high
as if I were a hoopoe
and the wind itself my wings.
At dawn, the call of the night guard
woke me from my dream, from my language:
You will live another death,
so revise your last will,
the hour of execution is postponed again.
I asked: Until when?
He said: Wait till you have died some more.
I said: I possess nothing so nothing can possess me
and have written my will in my own blood:
'O inhabitants of my song: trust in water.'
Mahmoud Darwish