The house murdered.

• Author: Darwish, Mahmoud
• Position: Poem

In one minute, the whole life of a house ends. The house murdered is also mass murder, even if vacant of its residents. It is a mass grave for the basic elements needed to construct a building for meaning, or for an insignificant poem in a time of war. The house, murdered, is the amputation of things from their relations and from the names of emotions, and it is tragedy's need to guide eloquence to contemplate the life of a thing. In each thing there's a being that aches ... the memory of fingers, of a scent, of an image. And houses get murdered just as their residents get murdered. And as the memory of things get murdered--wood, stone, glass, iron, cement--they all scatter in fragments like beings. And cotton, silk, linen, notepads, books, all are torn like words whose owners were not given time to speak. And the plates, spoons, toys, records, faucets, pipes, door handles, and the fridge, the washer, the vases, jars of olives and pickles, and canned foods, all break as their...