Against barbarity, poetry can resist only by confirming its

"Against barbarity, poetry can resist only by confirming its attachment to human fragility like a blade of grass growing on a wall while armies march by." Thus spoke Mahmoud Darwish, the poet of exile and memory, whose words carried both sorrow and defiance. In this utterance lies a vision of the delicate yet indomitable power of poetry. For when barbarity—the cruelty of war, the brutality of oppression, the machinery of destruction—unleashes its iron march, poetry cannot meet it with equal force. It has no sword, no cannon, no army. Instead, it resists by embracing what makes us most human: our fragility, our tenderness, our ability to feel and to remember, even in the shadow of violence.

The image Darwish offers is striking: a blade of grass sprouting from a wall while armies thunder past. What can grass do against steel? It cannot stop the soldiers, nor overthrow their power. Yet it resists by existing, by living where it should not, by whispering of life amidst death, of hope amidst ruin. So too does poetry resist barbarity: not by defeating it on the battlefield, but by preserving the flame of humanity that barbarity seeks to extinguish.

History bears witness to this. During World War II, amid the horror of ghettos and camps, secret poems were written on scraps of paper, etched into walls, memorized and carried by survivors. These poems did not halt the armies of death, yet they endured when guns grew silent. They reminded the world that even in the deepest darkness, the human soul still spoke, still felt, still refused to be reduced to silence. The fragility of verse, like grass on a wall, outlasted the terror of the moment.

Consider also the voice of Wilfred Owen, who wrote of the First World War. His poems did not prevent the slaughter of the trenches, nor alter the strategy of generals. Yet they exposed the inhumanity of the conflict, giving future generations not numbers or statistics, but the raw pulse of suffering, the taste of mud, the cry of broken men. His fragile lines became eternal, while the armies that marched by crumbled into dust. Thus, poetry triumphed—not with power, but with memory.

Darwish, who knew exile and displacement, spoke not in abstractions but in lived truth. His own poetry was born in the shadow of loss, under the weight of dispossession. For him, poetry’s strength lay precisely in its frailty: its ability to hold the pain of a people, to sing of their humanity, even when surrounded by brutality. Like the grass on the wall, his verses testified that life still grows, that tenderness survives, that memory resists erasure.

The lesson, then, is profound: when confronted with cruelty and violence, do not despise the fragile things. The soft word, the tender act, the quiet song may seem powerless before armies, yet these are the very things that barbarity fears most. For cruelty seeks to dehumanize, and every affirmation of humanity is a form of resistance. To write, to sing, to love, to remember—these are victories against the forces that would strip us of our dignity.

Practically, this means we must cherish and create art in the face of violence. When cruelty spreads, let us plant seeds of compassion. When voices are silenced, let us raise songs. When others march to destroy, let us bend down to tend to the fragile—children, the grieving, the displaced. Like poetry, our actions may not stop the armies, but they will preserve what it means to be human, and in time, they will outlast the march of barbarity.

So remember, children of tomorrow: poetry is not weak because it is fragile. Its fragility is its strength. Like a blade of grass that survives the boots of an army, it testifies that life endures where death would reign. Darwish spoke truly—poetry resists not with might, but with the unyielding courage of the fragile human heart. And in the end, it is this fragile heart that will remain when the armies have passed away.