“There is a dialectic of wandering and homeland at the heart of Arabic poetry. The poets Jordan Davis evokes at the beginning of his article on Darwish were nomadic Bedouin, who would open their famous poems with invocations of lost love at the site of old encampments. These sites were just temporary dwellings, but erotic memories infused them with significance.

In the Levant, several cities boast of being possible candidates for “the longest continuously inhabited city in the world.” The scholar of Arabic poetry, Suzanne Pinckney, wrote in her book The Mute Immortals Speak of the ancient Arab story of “the bursting of the dam at Ma’rib.” “With the dispersal of its people, the Himyarite kingdom became a byword for a failed polity, the moral of their story preserved in the idiom tafarraqu aydiya Saba, ‘they scattered in all directions.’ … It is not surprising, then, that in Islamic terms, the heavenly garden is termed dar al-qarar, the permanent abode, and the Ka’bah at Mecca (and its heavenly counterpart) given the epithet al-bayt al-ma’mur, the (continuously) inhabited dwelling.”

A successful polis makes life more livable for its inhabitants, who in turn sustain the life of the polis. Scattering and exile constitute failure.

Still, some of the most exciting poetry in world history was written by people who were essentially homeless. This homelessness augmented the value of poetry for them—a poem was a “thing” they could essentially carry around in their heads, weighing nothing, and unable to be stolen or lost in transit. Conversely, even a temporary campsite has the heaviness of “home” if what took place there burned itself into the brain forever.”

via guerrillamamamedicine + clingtomymouth + poetrynews + The Poetry Foundation