Heba Al-Agha’s ‘Free Poems in the Autumn’
This poem was composed on September 13, 2024, as the first signs of autumn arrive.
Free Poems in the Autumn
By Heba Al-Agha
Translated by Julia Choucair Vizoso
How will my poems be free this fall
when memory can’t shed its heartbreak, how will I check on my balcony rose
when I haven’t watered it in
one year
our clothes in the washing machine, unwashed and unhung.
How will I take new pictures of my tree-lined street
when someone recommends I take one from right there,
the spot where he was martyred.
How will she look at me, the Poinciana tree that shaded the barbershop next door
and now pines for the boys on their way to school and the mothers who nagged at them
to prune their frizzy heads, as she asks of me:
What took you so long!
How will my poems be free in the fall, when it’s time to shake off
the exhaustion of summer, to plan
a boat trip, a breakfast at Marina or somewhere new that Gaza invents,
a morning walk to coffee, the indulgence of a croissant from Mazaj.
How will my poems be free when I am in waiting
for Saturday, for a long break, for my mother’s lap to throw myself into
for a visit to our farm where I’ll walk around like a tourist picking all the buds, a yellow date,
a guava
for my gluttonous eyes as I ask my mother, When will the olives be harvested?
for returning home with colossal jars of dates and lime.
In this fall that is free
of homecomings and goings and visits to my mother, Saturdays and streets and Poinciana trees, children and homes and olives, and a single guava fruit.
September 13, 2024
Heba, her husband, and their two young children need our help to get their bearings in Cairo, and to support their relatives still in Gaza. You can help at this GoFundMe campaign.
Heba Al-Agha is a mother, amateur writer, and creative writing educator at the A.M. Qattan Foundation in Gaza City. She does not belong to any writers’ unions and has not published any literary books, but works with an army of young writers training them in freedom and the power of writing. She writes at t.me/hebalaghatalkwar and https://gazastory.com/archives/author/hebaaga.
Julia Choucair Vizoso is an independent scholar and seasonal translator. She hopes Heba Al-Agha’s words move you to refuse and resist the Israel-US genocide of the Palestinian people and destruction of Lebanon, wherever and however you can.