Rising From beneath the Ashes
And who shelled the roses in the vase?
Who broke the vase?
These are the remnants of the dove's wing-
The same dove that, twenty years ago,
Took refuge on my balcony.
Who hurled my balcony into the rubble of my ruined house?
And who did the phantoms of those
Who stoned me
Slip unnoticed
Into the shards of my mirrors?
Without my noticing?
I am the messenger,
I have not cast my face into the well,
Yet I found a daffodil blooming
Along the paths that lead home-
My home after death.
Nor have I slain a herb that follows my steps
In dreams,
Nor a violet that grows as memory
On my daughter's shirt,
Nor the souls of the fallen
Nor the roads of suffering.
This is me-
Who slowed his enemies' hands,
Letting them pause, if only for a fleeting moment,
Between two fragile wars, from killing him
It is I-
Who held the earth,
So it could check its balance
After the houses had collapsed onto their inhabitants.
I have never entrusted my dominion
To the kingdom of a god who would
Choose another over me at whim.
I did not aid the prophet's armies
In demolishing the kingdom of the ants.
Nor did my palm tree consort with the killer of the prophets,
Who once beheld my body lifeless body among them,
In the psalms of their return.
That is my heart,
On a fallen stone,
Searching for me beneath this rubble.
And those-my hands-
Tracking the flight of the birds.
I am still alive.
Here lies the question.
The
Truce of the Dead
The
wars no longer have the flavours of
Those great wars:
Nothing claims time here,
No truce to gather bodies from the
Edges of the streets,
Or to seek our names within the bellies of graves.
So that we might guide the hostages' screams
From beneath the rubble to a passage
Of deliverance
And regret the haste with which we
Rushed toward our own deaths,
Draped in black,
Lest we turn to ash upon the riverbank-
My river, tracing the clouds with me,
Until we can believe the lake's waters never
Whisper of the moon over our
Neighbourhood to strangers.
Tell me, stranger: why did you come,
When you meant to leave?
As though you, like me, are here.
There, I speak to no one but myself.
Perhaps you lifted your hand so
I might see that I am no longer a mere phantom,
And hid your eyes in a rotting corpse
Lest you truly behold me.
As if
I had known you-
Cries a widow, rushing to embrace her
Little daughter in the alley,
The alley slanting against the opposite wall
You-
Yes, you.
You who bred rats
In ships abandoned to rot at sea.
As if I had slipped away
By some blind miracle.
Did you not glimpse me
In the mirrors of your dead?
A woman who, in those petty wars,
Lost her husband.
I touch my heart
And lament my fate:
O God! How vast the dead we laid to rest,
O God! How vast the dead who strayed from us,
O God, How vast the dead we lost,
And how vast the dead who …
And how vast the dead are!
Not
one of them today,
But I have poured into him the distilled
Essence of my soul .
No one among them today
But I have whispered to him the promise of salvation.
Nothing
in this war unfolds
That could resemble anything
That might occur.
In any war yet to come.
You
may kill the singer,
But you can never assassinate
The songs.
Collectors
of the Graves
The
survivors will not remember the cemeteries of the living-
In the heart of the ghost city,
A ledger of mass graves, bound with black ribbons,
Blind to the dead of war.
They will not recall, amid the ruin,
The moans congealed upon their lips,
And the light withering in their fingers,
Growing weary of the final breath.
Nor the women, stretching their arms toward the children,
Lulling their dolls to sleep-
Like them-
Under the rubble.
Unable
to bear remaining there,
As the narrators once saw grass rise in
The shade of their graves.
And yet, the ruins held their silent witnesses
The witnesses were slain,
And the killer's hand absolved itself,
Of the sin of my death.
Upon the War Museum's monument,
The victims' corpses were bartered for our salted blood ,
While the judges poured their ink on the gavels,
Through gloved hands.
Has
the hour not come for us-
We who won nothing but scraps of life
Beneath the city's rubble-
To be believed at last,
That we are human,
Entirely human,
Nothing but?
And it is the right of prey like us
To curse the hunter-
Our children, as they breath like flowers.
Holds the right to seek refuge on our balconies-
Those balconies that no longer belong
To anything ,
Anything at all.
For fifty years, an old fisherman
Drifted with his boat, crying out:
It killed me so often, to see my children's dreams
Die upon the besieged shores,
Cast into old age, far from their childhood.
In
South African notebook, a female
historian records:
And so they are-
All of them, armed and trained
In a sacred craft of slaughter,
Erasing every dark thing on this land,
Dark as we are.
Even Christ-they painted white,
In their likeness.
I
shall never forgive-
For, in their fevered pursuit behind me,
They tormented my black cat,
A small gift bestowed upon me
By the Minister of Education in Norway,
Who leaned close, laughing with a trembling, jaundiced smile:
''Take it today,
Lest it become a secret agent for cowboy dogs
Raising oil in the Mojave,
Hating Mandela's name.''
Arrested eight protesters for Gaza-
Is my grandson among them?''
An old woman, caring for orphans
In the rural stretches of Managua,
Casts this fleeting question to a passerby
Who mimics darkness moaning among graves
In the mirrors of those who devour us.
We,
like you, are ordinary human beings
Who ask the sheep led to slaughter:
Why do they plant more fires upon our beds
Each time they assassinate the flowers of the field,
While we find no trace
To mark the passing of their shadows?
Author’s
Bionote:
Who broke the vase?
These are the remnants of the dove's wing-
The same dove that, twenty years ago,
Took refuge on my balcony.
Who hurled my balcony into the rubble of my ruined house?
And who did the phantoms of those
Who stoned me
Slip unnoticed
Into the shards of my mirrors?
Without my noticing?
I have not cast my face into the well,
Yet I found a daffodil blooming
Along the paths that lead home-
My home after death.
Nor have I slain a herb that follows my steps
In dreams,
Nor a violet that grows as memory
On my daughter's shirt,
Nor the souls of the fallen
Nor the roads of suffering.
This is me-
Who slowed his enemies' hands,
Letting them pause, if only for a fleeting moment,
Between two fragile wars, from killing him
It is I-
Who held the earth,
So it could check its balance
After the houses had collapsed onto their inhabitants.
To the kingdom of a god who would
Choose another over me at whim.
I did not aid the prophet's armies
In demolishing the kingdom of the ants.
Nor did my palm tree consort with the killer of the prophets,
Who once beheld my body lifeless body among them,
In the psalms of their return.
On a fallen stone,
Searching for me beneath this rubble.
And those-my hands-
Tracking the flight of the birds.
I am still alive.
Here lies the question.
Those great wars:
Nothing claims time here,
No truce to gather bodies from the
Edges of the streets,
Or to seek our names within the bellies of graves.
So that we might guide the hostages' screams
From beneath the rubble to a passage
Of deliverance
And regret the haste with which we
Rushed toward our own deaths,
Draped in black,
Lest we turn to ash upon the riverbank-
My river, tracing the clouds with me,
Until we can believe the lake's waters never
Whisper of the moon over our
Neighbourhood to strangers.
Tell me, stranger: why did you come,
When you meant to leave?
As though you, like me, are here.
There, I speak to no one but myself.
Perhaps you lifted your hand so
I might see that I am no longer a mere phantom,
And hid your eyes in a rotting corpse
Lest you truly behold me.
Cries a widow, rushing to embrace her
Little daughter in the alley,
The alley slanting against the opposite wall
You-
Yes, you.
You who bred rats
In ships abandoned to rot at sea.
As if I had slipped away
By some blind miracle.
Did you not glimpse me
In the mirrors of your dead?
A woman who, in those petty wars,
Lost her husband.
I touch my heart
And lament my fate:
O God! How vast the dead we laid to rest,
O God! How vast the dead who strayed from us,
O God, How vast the dead we lost,
And how vast the dead who …
And how vast the dead are!
But I have poured into him the distilled
Essence of my soul .
No one among them today
But I have whispered to him the promise of salvation.
That could resemble anything
That might occur.
In any war yet to come.
But you can never assassinate
The songs.
In the heart of the ghost city,
A ledger of mass graves, bound with black ribbons,
Blind to the dead of war.
They will not recall, amid the ruin,
The moans congealed upon their lips,
And the light withering in their fingers,
Growing weary of the final breath.
Nor the women, stretching their arms toward the children,
Lulling their dolls to sleep-
Like them-
Under the rubble.
As the narrators once saw grass rise in
The shade of their graves.
And yet, the ruins held their silent witnesses
The witnesses were slain,
And the killer's hand absolved itself,
Of the sin of my death.
Upon the War Museum's monument,
The victims' corpses were bartered for our salted blood ,
While the judges poured their ink on the gavels,
Through gloved hands.
We who won nothing but scraps of life
Beneath the city's rubble-
To be believed at last,
That we are human,
Entirely human,
Nothing but?
To curse the hunter-
Our children, as they breath like flowers.
Holds the right to seek refuge on our balconies-
Those balconies that no longer belong
To anything ,
Anything at all.
For fifty years, an old fisherman
Drifted with his boat, crying out:
It killed me so often, to see my children's dreams
Die upon the besieged shores,
Cast into old age, far from their childhood.
And so they are-
All of them, armed and trained
In a sacred craft of slaughter,
Erasing every dark thing on this land,
Dark as we are.
Even Christ-they painted white,
In their likeness.
For, in their fevered pursuit behind me,
They tormented my black cat,
A small gift bestowed upon me
By the Minister of Education in Norway,
Who leaned close, laughing with a trembling, jaundiced smile:
''Take it today,
Lest it become a secret agent for cowboy dogs
Raising oil in the Mojave,
Hating Mandela's name.''
Arrested eight protesters for Gaza-
Is my grandson among them?''
An old woman, caring for orphans
In the rural stretches of Managua,
Casts this fleeting question to a passerby
Who mimics darkness moaning among graves
In the mirrors of those who devour us.
Who ask the sheep led to slaughter:
Why do they plant more fires upon our beds
Each time they assassinate the flowers of the field,
While we find no trace
To mark the passing of their shadows?
*Abdulla Issa: Palestinian poet, born on 15 January 1964, into a family that sought refuge in Syria following the occupation of Palestine in 1948. He grew up in Babila Camp on the outskirts of Damascus. He won the Poetry Prize in 1983 and was regarded as one of the leading symbols of renewal in contemporary Arabic poetry during the 1980s. He graduated from the Maxim Gorky Institute of Literature (Department of Poetry) in 1995, and earned a PhD in Literature from the Institute of Asian and African Literatures at Moscow State University in 2000, where he later lectured and taught poetry. In 2021, he received an academic distinction in recognition of his contributions to culture and creative arts. He has been awarded numerous honorary titles, most notably “The Poet of Palestine in Exile” and “The Poetic Voice of Palestine.” He has received many Arab and international awards, including: Person of the Year in the Dialogue of Cultures and Civilizations – World Literature Fund (2014) Medal of Merit in Culture, Science, and Arts (Innovation Level) – awarded by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas (2015) Chekhov Medal for Creativity (2017) Golden Feather Award (2019) Medal of the International Association of Writers’ Unions (2024) Palestine International Prize for Literature – Poetry (2024) He has published numerous poetry collections, including: Dead People Preparing the Funeral, Alaa, The Ink of the First Sky, The Resurrection of the Walls, The Shepherds of the Sky, The Oleander Shepherds, My Brothers, O Father, Not the Wolf, The Commandments of Fawzia Al-Hassan, There Where the Shadows Groan, The Complete Poetic Works, The Sky of Gaza, and The Hills of Jenin. His critical works include Critical Vision, Word and Spirit in Contemporary Poetry, Poetics of Aesthetic Creation, and Methods of Contemporary Arab Artistic Expression. He has also written for the theater, notably The Kingdom of Demons. His works have been translated into many languages, and he has been hosted and honored at numerous Arab and international literary festivals.