Why Did You Leave the Horse Alone? (1995) is one of Mahmoud Darwish’s most personal and celebrated collections, translated into English by Jeffrey Sacks.

Written as a kind of autobiography in verse, the poems return to Darwish’s childhood in the Galilee village of al-Birwa, its destruction in 1948, his family’s flight to Lebanon and return as “present absentees”, and the long years of exile. Weaving personal memory with history, myth and the voices of his parents and grandfather, Darwish creates an epic of Palestinian loss and survival.