Photo/Illutration Injured Palestinians arrive at al-Shifa Hospital following Israeli airstrikes on Gaza City on Oct. 16. (AP Photo)

Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish was born in 1941 in the Arab village of al-Birwa in northern Palestine under the British Mandate.

When he was 6, it was abruptly decided that a nation called Israel would be established, and that his village would be a part of this new state.

Before long, Palestinian Arabs were being driven out of their homes by the Jewish militia.

“I will never forget that night,” Darwish recalled. The villagers fled through olive groves, chased by the sounds of shelling and gunfire growing closer.

The moon was full that night. Many people were killed. Their village was razed to the ground, its name never to be heard of again.

Darwish started composing poems around the age of 10. While a student at an Israeli school, he got into trouble with authorities for writing a poem addressed to a Jewish classmate. It went: “You have a house, and I have none/ You have celebrations, but I have none/ Why can’t we play together?”

(This poem has been translated into Japanese by Inuhiko Yomota and included in an anthology of Darwish’s verses, published under the Japanese title of “Kabe ni Egaku,” literally, “Drawing on a wall.”)

Darwish’s poetry evolved into pieces that consoled the bruised Palestinian soul and inspired courage at the same time. And that was probably why Israeli authorities repeatedly arrested him for publishing his works.

In the land where enmity and hatred have formed impenetrable layers, people are again weeping and shaking with grief and indignation. Many Israelis have been slain. Many Palestinians have been slain. Young and old.

The dire situation in Gaza is profoundly depressing.

Darwish died in 2008 at the age of 67. A part of one of his poems goes, “History mocks its victims and its heroes/ It glances at them in passing and goes on/ The sea is mine/ The fresh air is mine.”

The words sink deeply into our hearts. I want peace, not carnage.

--The Asahi Shimbun, Oct. 17

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Vox Populi, Vox Dei is a popular daily column that takes up a wide range of topics, including culture, arts and social trends and developments. Written by veteran Asahi Shimbun writers, the column provides useful perspectives on and insights into contemporary Japan and its culture.

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