Enemy of the Sun

You may take the last strip of my land, Feed my youth to prison cells. O enemy of the sun, But I shall not compromise And to the last pulse in my veins I shall resist.

(excerpt)

About this poem

“Enemy of the Sun” (Aduww al-Shams) builds verse after verse of concession — perhaps you take my livelihood, my clothes, the last strip of my land, feed my flesh to the dogs — and answers each with the same refusal: “I shall not compromise… I shall resist.” The poem gave its title to Enemy of the Sun: Poetry of Palestinian Resistance (1970), the anthology edited by Naseer Aruri and Edmund Ghareeb that first carried Palestinian resistance poetry to a wide English-language readership.

A copy of that anthology was found among the ninety-nine books in George Jackson’s cell after the Black revolutionary was killed at San Quentin in 1971; Jackson had transcribed the poem by hand and shared it with fellow prisoners. When it later ran in the Black Panther newspaper misattributed to Jackson, the error only testified to how completely its defiance had crossed borders.

Sources

• Samih Al-Qasim, George Jackson, and “Enemy of the Sun” — World Literature Today (English translation)
• يا عدو الشمس — Manshur (Arabic text)