It Is Our Right To Love Autumn
By Mahmoud Darwish
translated, from the Arabic, by Munir Akash and Carolyn Forché
And we, too, have the right to love the last days of authumn and ask the grove:
Is there room now for a new autumn so we may lie down like coals?
Like gold, autumn brings its leaves to half-staff.
If only we never said goodbye to the fundamentals
and questioned our fathers when they fled at knife-point.
May poetry and God’s name have mercy on us!
We have the right to warm the nights of beautiful women, and talk about
what might shorted the night of two strangers waiting for North on the compass.
It’s autumn. We have the right to smell autumn’s fragrances and ask the night for a dream.
Does the dream, like the dreamers themselves, sicken? Autumn. Autumn.
Can a people be born on a guillotine?
We have the right to die any way we wish.
May the earth hide itself away in a blade of wheat!
Bring a plate to share, clippings from your garden for a centerpiece bouquet and/or an instrument to play. Suzanne has a piano & darbuka!
During the evening, community member, Mariam Sughayer, will be available to offer exclusive updates on a historic, first-of-its-kind, Palestinian-led congressional fact-finding delegation departing in mid-January 2027 over the Martin Luther King Jr. Day congressional recess (January 15 - 20).
Organized by A New Policy, the delegation will bring key U.S. lawmakers into direct contact with the realities of the occupation, military legal systems, and Palestinian daily life, while experiencing the depth of Palestinian culture and community resilience. The journey will be documented by an Emmy-winning filmmaking team—led by international journalist Matthew Cassel and West Bank cinematographer Ayman Abu Ramouz, in partnership with The Guardian, capturing a critical turning point in American foreign policy.
