Do you know a road for Loss
That doesn’t end in a Settlement?²
In Jerusalem—the Soldiers march
With heavy boots over the Clouds …³
Amman tortures me in Jerusalem,
And Baghdad denies Beirut in my name—
Damascus kills me in Cairo.⁴
It wasn’t enough they took the Land,
Now they conquer our Sky—
What’s the Point of Wings,
When all the Air is stolen?⁵
Will the Land succeed—
Or will the Jets?⁶
Not the color of our Skin,
Nor the seed of our Kin,
Can dim our little sinless Lights.⁷
Our Love takes on the aspect of our Homeland.⁸
I want to write a poem about Home—
And not have to mean Country.⁹
And they search us: in our breast just our Heart,
In our heart just our People, in our voice just our Grief,
In our grief just our Cell, and they search our cell:
Only to find themselves in Chains.¹⁰
¹ Palestinian proverb (الارض تعادل الروح)
² Maya Abu Al-Hayyat tr. Fady Joudah, A Road for Loss
³ Tamim Al-Barghouti tr. Houssem Ben Lazreg In Jerusalem
⁴ ‘Abd al-Latif ‘Aql tr. Elmusa & Davies, On the Presence of Absence
⁵ Baraah Qandeel, They Took My Sky Away
⁶ Ghassan Zaqtan tr. Fady Joudah, Conversations with My Father
⁷ Amana Diab, The Forgotten High Life
⁸ Waleed Sayf tr. Elmusa & John Heath-Stubbs, Death at Night’s End
⁹ George Abraham, Post-Script: Against Consolidation
¹⁰ Mahmoud Darwish tr. original, Poem of the Land