The Shadows of the Walk

 As much as I can

 I humour the shadows

 But when they narrow

 They are no longer mine

 And when they widen

 They're wrapped in the impossible.

 Yet, not to get lost

 I dip my feet in water

 Wet the path

 And slide.

--- Michael Iskandar Haddad (1919 - 1996) 

The State

A hyena attacks a herd of deer
Their hooves inscribe a thousand branches on the earth

A tree of tracks and shadows, growing fast
There’s no time to think
Which doe to choose

The hyena must decide in haste
Who will live and who will die
She chooses at random

The hyena does not know the deer
There’s no enmity here, no competition
If it were just another day

The hyena might have picked another
Even after the deer is dead
The hyena is incapable of explaining her choice

Yet I believe the hyena is aware
Of the balance of fear

If the herd

Runs, not from her, but towards her
They crush her, bone and all

If only the deer change the direction of their flight

I also believe the herd is aware of its abilities

Yet each doe fears she'll be abandoned by her sisters
If she runs at the common foe
So she abandons her sisters
And each doe thinks the same

The deer do not fear the hyena much
They only doubt themselves

Each deer lives and dies alone
Yet, there are moments

When God is kind to the world:
A young deer darts at the hyena without thinking

The rest follow
Like rain
In moments such as these
You feel it being born

A breathing dawn
Or a baby speaking eloquently
In the cradle

I’m not writing an allegory
On Revolution
And the meek empowered

I’m simply stating a scientific fact
The hyena is weaker than her victims
And she’s very much the coward

--- Mourid Barghouti

Translated by Tamim Al-barghouti 

Fuck Your Lecture on Craft, My People Are Dying

Colonizers write about flowers.

I tell you about children throwing rocks at Israeli tanks 

seconds before becoming daisies.
I want to be like those poets

who care about the moon. 

Palestinians don't see the moon 

from jail cells and prisons.
It's so beautiful, the moon.
They're so beautiful, the flowers.

I pick flowers for my dead father when I'm sad.
He watches Al Jazeera all day.
I wish Jessica would stop texting me Happy Ramadan.
I know I'm American because when I walk into a room something dies.

Metaphors about death are for poets who think ghosts care about sound.
When I die, I promise to haunt you forever.
One day, I'll write about the flowers like we own them.

--- Noor Hindi

Comrade poets!

 Comrade poets!

 We're in a new world

 What's past is dead, who writes a poem

 In the age of wind and the atom

 Creates prophets!

 Our verses

 Have no colour

 No taste

 No sound

 If they do not carry the lantern

 From house to house!

 And if the "simple" cannot understand our poems

 Better for us to shed them

 And resort to silence

 If only these words were

 A plough in the hands of a peasant

 A shirt, a door, a key

 If only these words were!

 A poet says

 If my poems please my friends

 And anger my enemies

 Then I'm a poet.

 And I shall speak!

---Mahmoud Darwish   

ENOUGH FOR ME

Enough for me to die on her earth

be buried in her

to melt and vanish into her soil

then sprout forth as a flower

played with by a child from my country.

Enough for me to remain

in my country’s embrace

to be in her close as a handful of dust

a sprig of grass

a flower.

--- Fadwa Tuqan

IF I MUST DIE

If I must die, 

you must live 

to tell my story 

to sell my things 

to buy a piece of cloth 

and some strings, 

(make it white with a long tail) 

so that a child, somewhere in Gaza 

while looking heaven in the eye 

awaiting his dad who left in a blaze— 

and bid no one farewell 

not even to his flesh 

not even to himself— 

sees the kite, my kite you made, flying up above 

and thinks for a moment an angel is there 

bringing back love 

If I must die 

let it bring hope 

let it be a tale.

--- Refaat Alareer

WEDNESDAY

A man wailing is not a dancing bear —Aimé Césaire

There’s death in the eyes of this newborn.
I heard the baby complain about a treacherous defeat,
called it the same old catastrophe.

A storm in his ear says it’s raging for silence.
Thunder erupts when he’s shushed.
What a worsened scenario. He skipped ahead.

What do you do when your destiny is predetermined?
Life in this hospital laughs at us.
Long is the wait. Wild is the wind.

I ask if there’s a wedding going on.
The nurse complained of the clouds.
If I were a stupid flower, 

I’d wither under the rain.

They asked her, What’s wrong with the flower?
not What’s wrong with the rain?

--- Mohammed El-Kurd

I wish children didn’t die

“I wish children didn’t die.

 I wish they would be temporarily elevated to the skies until the war ends. 

Then they would return home safe, 

and when their parents would ask them: “where were you?”, 

they would say: “we were playing in the clouds”.

– Ghassan Kanafani

Like a Cloud, We Travel

Wiped out by every wind over Gaza,
we are scattered on this earth,
footsteps in the desert.

We do not, or cannot, know
when and how to return
to the homes
our ancestors loved
for centuries.

Like clouds,
we try to give shade and rain:
the best we can.

But deep down, we do not know
whether we even belong
to where we happen to exist.

Like clouds,
we might visit our homes
without knowing that they still are
ours.

Invaders have changed much
of our landscape,
much or our lives.

--- Mosab Abu Toha

"Our Country is a Graveyard"

"Gentlemen, you have transformed
our country into a graveyard
You have planted bullets in our heads,
and organized massacres
Gentlemen, nothing passes like that
without account
All that you have done
to our people is
registered in notebooks".

---  Tawfiq Ziyad

I have a country

I have a country
it's invisible
it has no flags
or moonlight
or river
or mountain
or clouds
to understand heaven
or flames
to take desire apart
but in the sadness of its map
there's the answer we need.

--- Nathalie Handal, "Everyday"

We Love What We Have

We love what we have, no matter how little,
because if we don’t, everything will be gone. If we don’t
we will no longer exist, since there will be nothing here for us.
What’s here is something that we are still
building. It’s something we cannot yet see,
because we are part
of it.
Someday soon, this building will stand on its own, while we,
we will be the trees that protect it from the fierce
wind, the trees that will give shade
to children sleeping inside or playing on swings.

--- Mosab Abu Toha

A Country Called Song

I lived in a country called Song:
Countless singing women made me
a citizen,
and musicians from the four corners
composed cities for me with mornings and nights,
and I roamed through my country
like a man roams through the world.

My country is a song,
and as soon as it ends, I go back
to being a refugee

--- Najwan Darwish, 

Tr. by Kareem J. Abu-Zeid

I grant you refuge

1.
I grant you refuge
in invocation and prayer.
I bless the neighborhood and the minaret
to guard them
from the rocket

from the moment
it is a general’s command
until it becomes
a raid.

I grant you and the little ones refuge,
the little ones who
change the rocket’s course
before it lands
with their smiles.

2.
I grant you and the little ones refuge,
the little ones now asleep like chicks in a nest.

They don’t walk in their sleep toward dreams.
They know death lurks outside the house.

Their mothers’ tears are now doves
following them, trailing behind
every coffin.

3.
I grant the father refuge,
the little ones’ father who holds the house upright
when it tilts after the bombs.
He implores the moment of death:
“Have mercy. Spare me a little while.
For their sake, I’ve learned to love my life.
Grant them a death
as beautiful as they are.”

4.
I grant you refuge
from hurt and death,
refuge in the glory of our siege,
here in the belly of the whale.

Our streets exalt God with every bomb.
They pray for the mosques and the houses.
And every time the bombing begins in the North,
our supplications rise in the South.

5.
I grant you refuge
from hurt and suffering.

With words of sacred scripture
I shield the oranges from the sting of phosphorous
and the shades of cloud from the smog.

I grant you refuge in knowing
that the dust will clear,
and they who fell in love and died together
will one day laugh.

---  Hiba Abu Nada

(trans. Huda Fakhreddine)

Source: Protean Magazine

INTERPRETATIONS

A poet sits in a coffee shop, writing.
The old lady
thinks he is writing a letter to his mother,
the young woman
thinks he is writing a letter to his girlfriend,
the child
thinks he is drawing,
the businessman
thinks he is considering a deal,
the tourist
thinks he is writing a postcard,
the employee
thinks he is calculating his debts.
The secret policeman
walks, slowly, towards him.

- Mourid Barghouti

Oh rascal children of gaza

Oh rascal children of gaza,
You who constantly disturbed me 

with your screams under my window,
You who filled every morning 

with rush and chaos,
You who broke my vase

and stole the lonely flower on my balcony.
Come back –
and scream as you want and break all the vases.
Steal all the flowers,
Come back,
Just come back…

--- Khaled Juma

Leaving Childhood Behind

When I left, I left my childhood in the drawer
and on the kitchen table. I left my toy horse
in its plastic bag.

I left without looking at the clock

I forget whether it was noon or evening.

Our horse spent the night alone,

no water, no grains for dinner. 

It must have thought we'd left to cook a meal

for late guests or to 

for late guests or make a cake
for my sister's tenth birthday.

I walked with my sister towards our road with no end point.
We sang a birthday song.
The hovering warplanes echoed across the heaven.

My tired parents strolled behind,
my father clutching to his chest
the keys to our house and to the stable.

We arrived at a rescue station.
News of ceaseless strikes roared on the radio.
I hated death, but I hated life, too,
when we had to walk to our prolonged death,
reciting our never-ending ode.

- Mosab Abu Toha

“Think of Others”

As you prepare your breakfast, think of others
(do not forget the pigeon’s food).
As you conduct your wars, think of others
(do not forget those who seek peace).
As you pay your water bill, think of others
(those who are nursed by clouds).
As you return home, to your home, think of others
(do not forget the people of the camps).
As you sleep and count the stars, think of others
(those who have nowhere to sleep).
As you liberate yourself in metaphor, think of others
(those who have lost the right to speak).
As you think of others far away, think of yourself
(say: “If only I were a candle in the dark”).

--- Mahmoud Darwish

We deserve a better death.

We deserve a better death.
Our bodies are disfigured and twisted,
embroidered with bullets and shrapnel.
Our names are pronounced incorrectly
on the radio and TV
Our photos, plastered onto the walls of our buildings,
fade and grow pale.
The inscriptions on our gravestones disappear,
covered in the feces of birds and reptiles.
No one waters the trees that give shade
to our graves.
The blazing sun has overwhelmed
our rotting bodies.

---Mosab Abu Toha

You and I

You’re beautiful like a liberated homeland
I’m exhausted like a colonized one.

You’re sad as a forsaken person, fighting on
I’m agitated as a war near at hand.

You’re desired like the end of a raid
I’m terrified as if I’m searching the debris.

You’re brave like a trainee pilot
I’m as proud as his grandmother may be.

You’re anxious like a patient’s dad,
I’m as calm as his nurse.

You’re as sweet as dew
And to grow, I need you.

We’re both as wild as vengeance
We’re both as gentle as forgiveness.

You’re strong like the court’s pillars
I’m bewildered like I’ve endured prejudice.

And whenever we meet
We talk, without pause, like two lawyers

Defending
The world…

--- Mourid Barghouti (Translator: Dina Al-Mahdy)