Poet of defiance

• Last Updated: August 10. 2008 9:13PM UAE / August 10. 2008 5:13PM GMT

Every cause needs a poet; in the late Mahmoud Darwish, Palestine got much more. Darwish, who told eloquently if poignantly the tragedy of dispossession, occupation, exile and infighting, became the conscience of the Palestinians when they needed it most. His words consolidated the very idea of a Palestinian nation and became the cherished anthem of a dispersed people.

Darwish, who died Saturday at age 67, was eminently political. Always the committed leftist and staunch nationalist, he served as a moral compass for a Palestinian political and intellectual elite too often blind to the compromises they made. At odds with the Palestinian leadership for signing the 1993 Oslo agreement, he nevertheless moved to the West Bank after 20 years in exile, continuously writing in defiance of Israel. But he lived to see his ideals crushed by an inept and corrupt Palestinian administration and the current suicidal struggle of power, which he denounced last year in a poem that put both factions to shame.

Darwish was also a towering cultural figure with appeal throughout the Arab world and beyond. Arabs, for whom poetry remains the highest form of literature, acclaim his unique contribution to the repertoire. He revolutionised poetic conventions by the simplicity and emotivity of his work.