Nasser Rabah: On the Birthday of the War

Translated by Saleh Razzouk with assistance by Philip Terman

Gaza, Palestine. 2023

1.

The gifts I didn’t send you on the birthday of the war, the poems waving at me, and I closed my book as if dying of gangrene, the bridges between my mouth and my words chattering about everything, the barricades beside the high fence of my tall life, the walks of my old neighbors before they were scattered with the bombs of absence, my aging dreams as I walked along, leaning on a juvenile crutch towards the sea that doesn’t care, the last pill in the treasure chest of hope, the beads of my never-ending rosary, and I’m delirious: Gaza…Gaza.

2

Like the drowning ones floating back to the surface, we are back from the war, our pockets full of memories of the bottom—sand and salt, our foreheads bandaged with tears, without eyes we read old signs about what happened, we return to the surface, the dead returning back to life.

3

Did my heart come to you in its nightly nakedness as a horse that did not encounter the mercy of bullets, nor encountered the kiss of life at the end of the war? Did it arrive not looking like me? The honey of flutes flows from his mouth, just as clouds do not resemble rain, and music does not resemble the strumming of strings. Did it come to you, peeling the singer’s sadness from the story’s moon, and squeezing the river’s braids from the late night of waiting? A horse carries its dead knight and walks. It is my heart that knocks on the door of your absence, naked as half an apple, and empty as a faded day after a long war.

4

How many ships can sink in your silence when you see me returning from a funeral? How many mountains can I climb on your shoulders smiling, mother, so that I do not see the abyss? I return, drenched in soldiers’ clothes, withered like a prayer rug, confused like a dog chasing its tail, and a war chasing its names. I say: Be the father of howling, O road, be the mother of regret, O building.  Let me try my heart stagnant in a frosty river, let me try the frantic sweating of questions in the winter of my astonishment, and my mother is continuing dinner without tears. There are no dead in the building next door, so at night I can still hear the door coughing at night. No one is alive in the building next door, but I still hear the hiss of absence in my heart.

5

How can I forgive myself when I left you in the crowd? The sky is raining iron, the ground is like an old carpet we shake the dust off.  Among the crowd, the hospital was far away, and the sky continued its delirium.  And the hospital is still far away. Blue and green are gone, and nothing remains in my eyes but ashes, and the crowd is hysterical, raving, wailing: I am the forest of the dead. The beggars returned to him and found him blind, and I went back to look for my eyes, but I did not find them. How can I forgive myself? And the hospital far away?

6

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Poem copyright 2023 Nasser Rabah

Translation copyright 2023 Saleh Razzouk

Nasser Rabah is a Palestinian poet born in Gaza. He has published several books of poetry in Arabic. In the United States his work has appeared in journals such as Two Lines (Center for the Art of Translation), Poetry International, and Crazy Horse (now known as swamp pink).