I Don’t Believe in Greats
I’m aware some people suffer enough torment to become a lighthouse
then live on to old age
incapable of seeing what lights their way.
I don’t believe in survival.
I live in other people’s stories
like a rock suspended in space,
it doesn’t drop and can’t.
And blame, I don’t believe in it.
When incidents baffle me
and enemies blur into friends
I keep on filing my nails.
I’ve never blamed my nails
for nails that tear the flesh on my back.
Each time an opportunity arises for me to not believe in one thing
or another I smile from ear to ear
to let all this freedom in.
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.
