Why Did You Leave the Horse Alone?

Author: Mahmoud Darwish

Publisher: Archipelago (2006)

At once an intimate autobiography and a collective memory of the Palestinian people, Darwish’s interlinked poems are collective cries, songs, and glimpses of the human condition. Why Did You Leave the Horse Alone? (considered by many his chef-d’oeuvre) is a poetry of myth and history, of exile and suspended time, of an identity bound to his displaced people and to the rich Arabic language. Darwish’s poems — specific and symbolic, simple and profound — are historical glimpses, existential queries, chants of pain and injustice of a people separated from their land.