Palestinian author Ahlam Bsharat posted this untitled poem two days ago, which was translated to English by poet Zeina Hashem Beck and appears here with permission:
*
By Ahlam Bsharat
Translated by Zeina Hashem Beck
I saw a dead road on the road
& left it there
no one taught me
how to lift a dead road
from the ground
or how to hold
a building of fourteen floors
trembling.
*
I’m afraid of calling my scared friends
because I don’t know
what last word
I must say to them
in any case, it won’t be:
rest assured
*
I write about a fish that survived the war
it’s easy to write:
the fish has survived the war
*
I share a photo of the terrified
nameless cat
this is good:
to be without a name
so death won’t call you
*
My friends tell me about a cat named Cow
yes, I needed to hear the word cow
in the midst of this war:
for the milk has dried from my heart
after all this terror
*
I watched a video of a Gazan child
carrying a cat with two names
Batman &
Panda:
to have two names
is very good
*
when death calls you, my friend,
by one of them
run with the other
*
when death calls you, cat, saying:
Batman,
*
run fast,
for you are Panda
your name is Panda
& the occupation won’t be able
to kill Panda the cat
*
Ahlam Bsharat is a Palestinian writer who grew up in a village in Northern Palestine. She completed her Master’s Degree in Arabic Literature at An-Najah National University in Nablus. Besides poetry, picture books, short stories, novels, and memoirs, she has written a number of television and radio scripts. Her books have received many awards and recommendations. Ismee Alharakee Farasha (translated into the English as Code Name: Butterfly) was included in the IBBY Honor List for 2012, a biennial selection of outstanding, recently published books from more than seventy countries. Ismee Alharakee Farasha and Ashjaar lil-Naas al-Ghaa’ibeen (translated into English as Trees for the Absentees) were both runners up for the Etisalat Award For Children’s Arabic Literature in 2013. Code Name: Butterfly was shortlisted for the UK-based Palestine Book Awards in 2017. Bsharat also has a story in the recent collection, The Book of Ramallah, ed. Maya Abu Alhayyat.
Zeina Hashem Beck is a Lebanese poet. Her third full-length poetry collection, O, is forthcoming from Penguin Books in Summer 2022. Her collection Louder than Hearts won the 2016 May Sarton New Hampshire Poetry Prize. She’s also the author of 3arabi Song, winner of the 2016 Rattle Chapbook prize, There Was and How Much There Was, a 2016 Laureate’s Choice selected by Carol Ann Duffy, and To Live in Autumn, winner of the 2013 Backwaters Prize. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Poetry, Ploughshares, World Literature Today, The Southeast Review, The Adroit Journal, Triquarterly, the Academy of American Poets, and elsewhere. Zeina’s invented The Duet, a bilingual poetic form where English and Arabic exist separately and in relationship to each other. Her poem “Maqam” won Poetry Magazine’s 2017 Frederick Bock Prize.
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