(1)
Sitting in front of the screen, my thoughts resemble a bombed hospital.
Someone is digging,
they dig inside of me endlessly for the last grave.
Where is the ultimate resting place, the last grave of all happenings?
The martyrs in blue plastic bags,
pour into a mass grave like a river.
there is death . . . a kind of death no one has ever known before:
no doctor, no funeral parlor, no morgue attendant.
A death unlike itself
greater than the dead can bear,
greater than what even death can withstand.
Families from which not even a single mouth survived to say:
we were once here.
Women pregnant with children who will never be born,
wombs open to those who desire to return
now bombed
horses . . . horse-parts,
birds . . . bird-parts,
cats . . . cat-parts,
donkey-drawn carts
no one survived
heading south.
No one will arrive.
Paramedics rush to homes
that died a week ago
without them being known to anybody.
(2)
Oh Gaza,
Oh Hiroshima,
that gleams as brightly as animal skin
on the threshold of the past,
Oh Carthage,
violated by the sea,
Oh besieged Troy,
with traitorous horses,
Oh Sarajevo . . .
Oh blood apple,
Don’t go south,
they massacre palm trees there
at the crossings.
Don’t go north,
there are as many remaining body parts as there are eyelashes on your children.
Don’t go east,
the walls are covered in blood
flowing since the beginning of time.
Don’t go west,
they set up the gallows for you there
in the open desert.
Copyright © 2024 Omar Ziyadeh. Translation copyright © 2024 Alice S. Yousef. All rights reserved.