On Why Did You Leave the Horse Alone?

This is a fine collection by Mahmoud Darwish, the single most important modern poet of the Arab world (and arguably still is), and probably among the ten best poets anywhere in the entire modern period. The poems are beautiful and evocative, and “The Eternity of Cactus” especially so; it gives the collection its title, as Darwish describes fleeing Palestine during the Nakba and looking back from Lebanon to see that the horse was still at home. I can’t say I loved it quite as much as Mural or In the Presence of Absence, but it’s well worth the read.