An alternative resistance

The World Will Be Good

My son, I’m sleeping on the riverbed

and listening to you

as you cross the bridge.

It’s for your sake, too,

that I sleep in language:

your words never fail

to wake me.

The world will be good:

there will be nothing but the love

I left you as your inheritance

to weigh down your shoulders,

so share that love,

‘split yourself into many bodies’

just like Urwa Bin al-Ward, the son of the rose

(you too have no father but the rose).

*

My son, the cities were jagged

and all of this was so absurd.

Come, let’s go to the forest,

jump on my shoulders

and we’ll return to our roots,

come and laugh with me,

we’ll cleanse this river with our sound:

in the forest no one will judge us

for our laughter.

*

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ABOVE: Najwan Darwish

Credit: Veronique Vercheva

My son, I missed you on the eve

of Eid al Adha, the great festival.

You would have loved these lanterns

as they swayed to the praises of the Prophet.

I would have woken at dawn

to listen to the hymns.

Is it fear, or is it joy

that makes you tug my hand like this?

Don’t worry,

we won’t be lost here…

For your sake I woke early

and made my peace

with the festival.

*

From beyond the years,

from beyond the countries and all that the maps conceal,

I guard you

and you guard me.

I’m sleeping on the riverbed and listening

to you as you cross over.

In Paradise

We once woke in Paradise

and the angels surprised us

with their brooms and mops:

‘You smell like alcohol and earth;

your pockets are full

of poems and heresies…’

Servants of God, we said, go easy on us.

We long for but a single morning in Haifa:

Our dreams led us here

by mistake.

In Paradise (II)

Even in Paradise

I tossed and turned, writhed in longing;

enchanted by time, I willingly

returned to its bondage,

uncertain of my immortality.

Even in Paradise

all I could think of

was the earth.

The First Hour

A song from Aleppo,

or a poem from Andalusia,

or a ditty from a village

whose people were expelled:

What will visit the sick man

in the New Year’s first hour?

This is Haifa, the joy

of God’s hands in clay…

Don’t say goodbye to her,

it’s you who brings her back

now

and forever.

Amen.

An Ass from the Sixties

‘I don’t ever think during my hours of official duty,

And my life, as everyone knows, has been one long official duty…’

That’s what the employee, who had been awarded the Order of the Patient Donkey, said to me.

‘My wife doesn’t think either, nor my children, nor will my grandchildren think,

Nor do the clouds that pass over our house.

My boy, I’m worried about these thoughts that flit through your head like grasshoppers.

You remind me of myself when I was a young ass back in the sixties:

I used to listen to The Beatles and think about suicide…’

Then he patted me on the shoulder with an affectionate hoof and went on his way,

With blue flies dancing around his stately pair of glasses…

Translated by Kareem James Abu-Zeid