Beneath Le Départ des Poilus, Paris Gare de l’Est

Translator’s Note: The following poem by Kurdish–Syrian writer Golan Haji, written in the winter of 2022, was slated to appear in Kontinentaldrift: Das Arabische Europa (Continental drift: the Arab Europe, 2023). Edited by Ghayath Almadhoun and Sylvia Geist, the ground-breaking anthology was to feature contemporary work by thirty-four poets writing in Arabic who are based in Europe. However, publisher Haus für Poesie pulled the poem without consulting Almadhoun, along with nine others, which he says were mostly concerned with “Palestine, Judaism, and German history.”

**Beneath Le Départ des Poilus, Paris Gare de l’Est**

for Nart Abdalkareem

How labored the footsteps
on a platform past
from donations to gratitude.

Here, yesterday and now,
what did they gather as they fled from subsistence to subsistence?
They pierced the flesh of this place like thorns.
Like the star of fear, their faces yellowed by bitternesses—
departees saying goodbye, embracing, weeping,
dejected, apologetic.

Encircled by the noise of the lunchtime rush
I pulse with a word I did not hear
when it was sown in my flesh
those who tasted it fell silent.
My blood is fearful
like the Jews on the trains feared the words:
“Descendez! Terminus.”

Translator’s Note: The following poem by Kurdish–Syrian writer Golan Haji, written in the winter of 2022, was slated to appear in Kontinentaldrift: Das Arabische Europa (Continental drift: the Arab Europe, 2023). Edited by Ghayath Almadhoun and Sylvia Geist, the ground-breaking anthology was to feature contemporary work by thirty-four poets writing in Arabic who are based in Europe. However, publisher Haus für Poesie pulled the poem without consulting Almadhoun, along with nine others, which he says were mostly concerned with “Palestine, Judaism, and German history.”

**Beneath Le Départ des Poilus, Paris Gare de l’Est**

for Nart Abdalkareem

How labored the footsteps
on a platform past
from donations to gratitude.

Here, yesterday and now,
what did they gather as they fled from subsistence to subsistence?
They pierced the flesh of this place like thorns.
Like the star of fear, their faces yellowed by bitternesses—
departees saying goodbye, embracing, weeping,
dejected, apologetic.

Encircled by the noise of the lunchtime rush
I pulse with a word I did not hear
when it was sown in my flesh
those who tasted it fell silent.
My blood is fearful
like the Jews on the trains feared the words:
“Descendez! Terminus.”