The Butterfly's Burden, Mahmoud Darwish, (Fady Joudah tr.)
Why?
The apparent commercial unavailability of recordings of Marcel Khalife's compositions relating to Darwish's poetry, for one. Also, I ought to be conversant with his work: As a poet, or (humbled by exposure to angels) student of poetry, I have some great deficiencies of scope, not least such luminaries as Tagore, Neruda, and Darwish, not to mention most of the end of the 20th Century in English. To become aware of a great poet of which one was ignorant so late, is, well, embarrassing. One volume doesn't cure it, but it's a start.
(I have a very slim volume of Tagore's poetry, from toward the end of his life, and they're short and deep poems that beg a reader to check out some of his more youthful works too; this reader hasn't much: Reading poetry is hard. If it is good poetry, it is rich and stimulating: Just a little bit can take you a long way, and if you eat too much you risk being unable to savor. Also, a good poem might be like a sharp knife in that too casual use might lead to a deep and surprising cut.)
Anyway, I bought it and read the preface on the bus. Then I casually read a few. Then I was full, and certain that I should not read such fare on the bus.
Sometime later I casually opened it to a page somewhere in the middle where began a poem that . . . moved me . . . a surprising lot.* And I haven't read too much of that since.
Oh, a few more poems sequentially from the front, on those rare nights when I'm up to such potentially serious and demanding reading right before bed. But cautiously.
* "A Lesson From Kama Sutra" - ed.