Beloved Palestinian Poet Samih al-Qasim Dies at 75

I don’t like you, death
But I’m not afraid of you
And I know that my body is your bed
And my spirit is your bed cover
I know that your banks are narrow for me
I don’t love you, death
But I’m not afraid of you.

–One of Samih al-Qasim’s final poems

Beloved Palestinian poet Samih al-Qasim died Tuesday after a long battle with cancer, following a worsening of his health this past week. He was 75.

Al-Qasim — whose stature in Palestine ranked alongside Mahmoud Darwish’s — will be widely mourned.

Al-Qasim was born in 1939 in the Jordanian city of az-Zarqa, where his father was working at the time. He hailed from a Druze family from the town of Rameh in the Upper Galilee, and attended school there and in Nazareth, as his family did not flee in 1948.

As Dr. Issa Boullata wrote over at World…