You can sign up for our weekly poetry newsletter, curated by Mennan Salih, at arablitpoetry.substack.com.
‘The South, The Last Day’: A Poem for Amal Khalil
The South, The Last Day To Amal Khalil By Abbas Beydoun Translated by Yasmine Khayyat The South could be the last land, The last testament, perhaps the last sip The last lira, the last medicine, the last day. From its word We can fashion a lament, a wreath, or even a prayer. We can name it after ancient trees Or turn it into a message, a museum Even a dish, a dessert The South We could not place it at the center Nor raise its mountains That remained mere hills Nor make its borders impregnable Nor sell it as history or legend It came from a single memory Eternity needed no more than that An eternity fulfilled in a day ...
Rasha Omran: ‘I Want to Smile’
"I want to step out on my balcony and hang my laughter out on the clothesline, so that passersby can catch hold of it, scale the wall to the fourth floor, and laugh with me." ...
New Poetry: Maha Al Aswad’s ‘Death in Six Images’
"They walk beneath the sky. As their arms extend. As they grow new arms. As they carry their children.' ...
Mahmoud Darwish: ‘Till my End and Till Its End’
"Are you tired of walking / My son, are you tired?" ...
From ‘My Butterfly That Does Not Die’
Refaat Al Areer had set the scene, declaring, “If I must die,” and Alaa Al Qatarawi’s sorrow metamorphosed into a butterfly that perseveres. She writes, “If I die, my butterfly does not die.” ...
‘A New Year in Gaza’: By Ibrahim Nasrallah
The people named in this poem are the writers, painters, and musicians martyred in the genocide. They are only a few of the many artists who were martyred in the past two years of war against Gaza ...
Three Poems by Nima Hasan
"Hold me before the game ends. / Like everything else, / grief needs time / to become a language." ...
