// DUO SHOW
Stronger than memory and weaker than dewdrops, a multimedia exhibition by Karolina Markiewicz and Pascal Piron, is based on and merges with contemporary poetry to express current affairs in the world, but also its history and myths. Myths and abstraction which here represent a parallel world through which we can explain even the most impactful stories and facts to ourselves. A world in which we feel and which perhaps allows us to be part of a human community.
If I Were Another
By Mahmoud Darwish
Translated by Fady Joudah
If I were another on the road, I would not have looked
back, I would have said what one traveler said
to another: Stranger! awaken
the guitar more! Delay our tomorrow so our road
may extend and space may widen for us, and we may get rescued
from our story together: you are so much yourself ... and I am
so much other than myself right here before you!
If I were another I would have belonged to the road,
neither you nor I would return. Awaken the guitar
and we might sense the unknown and the route that tempts
the traveler to test gravity. I am only
my steps, and you are both my compass and my chasm.
If I were another on the road, I would have
hidden my emotions in the suitcase, so my poem
would be of water, diaphanous, white,
abstract, and lightweight ... stronger than memory,
and weaker than dewdrops, and I would have said:
My identity is this expanse!
If I were another on the road, I would have said
to the guitar: Teach me an extra string!
Because the house is farther, and the road to it prettier—
that’s what my new song would say. Whenever
the road lengthens the meaning renews, and I become two
on this road: I ... and another!
Mahmoud Darwish, "If I Were Another" from The Butterfly’s Burden. Copyright © 2008 by Mahmoud Darwish, English translation by Fady Joudah.
Curator(s):
Kevin Muhlen
Artist(s):
Karolina Markiewicz & Pascal Piron
