Since They Told Me My Love Won’t Be Coming Back from the War
I tried everything:
God, for example,
I leaned on his chest and prayed,
and on that rug, once and for all,
I learned that my love
won’t come back, and that if he does
won’t recognise me.
I tried my hand at politics,
memorised patriotic songs,
befriended legislators,
adored warriors,
but seasonal and moody
they changed their faces
as they do their speeches
once they got close to my pockets.
And then I knew that my love
won’t know me even if he returns.
Since they told me my love
won’t be coming back from the war,
I’ve been writing our children’s names
on clouds and in journals,
documenting their birthdays,
shoe sizes, the poems they recite,
and once and for all,
I learned that all of them
won’t be coming back from the war,
and neither will I.
From You Can Be the Last Leaf by Maya Abu-Alhayyat, translated from the Arabic by Fady Joudah (Minneapolis: Milkweed Editions, 2022). Translation copyright © 2022 Fady Joudah. Reprinted with permission from Milkweed Editions.
Fady Joudah has published five collections of poems: The Earth in the Attic; Alight; Textu; Footnotes in the Order of Disappearance; and, most recently, Tethered to Stars. He has translated several collections of poetry from the Arabic and is the co-editor and co-founder of the Etel Adnan Poetry Prize. He was a winner of the Yale Series of Younger Poets competition in 2007 and has received a PEN award, a Banipal/Times Literary Supplement prize, the Griffin Poetry Prize, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. He lives in Houston with his wife and children, where he practices internal medicine.
Maya Abu Al-Hayyat is the author of four poetry collections, four novels, and several books for children. Her writing has been translated into English, French, German, Swedish, and Korean. She is the editor of The Book of Ramallah (Comma Press, 2021) and director of the Palestine Writing Workshop in Birzeit, West Bank, Palestine. She currently lives in Jerusalem with her husband and children. Her selected poems from 2006 to 2021, You Can Be the Last Leaf, are forthcoming from Milkweed Books in 2022, translated by Fady Joudah.
