He has been described as the Palestinian "poet of conscience," a reluctant visionary who once wrote "my homeland is my suitcase."

He has been described as the Palestinian "poet of resistance," a reclusive thinker said to have written Yasser Arafat's famous 1974 United Nations plea: "I come bearing an olive branch and a freedom fighter's gun. Do not let the olive branch fall from my hand."

He has been called a "poet of exile," a Palestinian whose 1964 poem, "Identity Card," warned: "I do not hate people/Nor do I encroach/But if I become hungry/The usurper's flesh will be my food/Beware..."

Today, in what is being called the Palestinian Authority's first state funeral, thousands of people are expected to turn out in Ramallah to say farewell to Mahmoud Darwish, the celebrated poet who died this week in Houston at the age of 67.

"He started out as a poet of resistance," said Palestinian lawmaker Hanan Ashrawi. "Then he became a poet of conscience."

Darwish encapsulated the Palestinian experience in his life and words. Born in British mandate Palestine in 1941, Darwish and his family fled, then returned.

Darwish studied in the former-Soviet Union, was jailed in Israel, served with the PLO, and eventually broke with Arafat and the Palestinian politicians.

He became disenchanted with the Palestinian leaders, but kept on writing.

"I thought poetry could change everything, change history," Darwish said in 2002. "But now I think that poetry only changes the poet."

Last year, Darwish returned to Israel after 35 years of self-imposed exile to deliver a caustic reading, during which he castigated Hamas for taking over Gaza and said they had helped create "for one people, two countries, two prisons."

"If we do not find someone to defeat us again," Darwish wrote, "we defeat ourselves."

Last month, in what turned out to be his final appearance in Ramallah, Darwish read to an overflow crowd in the city's cultural palace, where I saw him for the first - and last - time.

Darwish sat uncomfortably next to PA PM Salaam Fayyad as writers and politicians heaped praise on the poet. Then, backed by a talented musical trio playing traditional ouds, Darwish delivered what turned out to be his final public message to the Palestinian people.

"History laughs at both the victim and the aggressor," Darwish told a journalist that night.

In a newer poem called "The Written Script," Darwish spoke of history dragging both a killer and his victim to death - a metaphor for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

"We travel like other people, but we return to nowhere," Darwish once wrote. "We are a country of words."

Today in Ramallah, Darwish will be buried in the heart of that Palestinian nation.