‘What have I survived’: New Poetry by Mahmoud Alshaer

What have I survived

By Mahmoud Alshaer

Translated by Wiam El-Tamami

 

I survived—came out of yesterday

alive, carried out on the shoulders

of the wind. Now I can cry—not

to confess, but to clear the silence

pent up in the throat, which preserves

the shadows of sounds. Unshackle me

from the time that circles my wrists.

A new day breaks, knowing nothing

of my history: how I spent half my life

measuring the distance bombs leave behind

in the soul. My body is a map of a broken

time; mornings unnamed. I feel my ribs with

my hands: like columns of a house, half

standing, half collapsed. I walk with steps whose

roads have been ripped out.

 

What have I survived?

Rubble that swallowed cities whole?

Memory that is no longer memory, but a palimpsest

of ash piled up in my throat? I have left,

but the place has not left me. I am trying

to shore up the crumbs of my life. To salvage

the part of me that has not yet been

bombed. The part that was hiding

in my chest all along,

like a small light.