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.