This night is irredeemable.
Where you are, it is still bright.
At the gates of Jerusalem,
a black sun is alight.

The yellow sun is hurting,
sleep, baby, sleep.
The Jews in the Temple’s burning
buried my mother deep.

Without rabbi, without blessing,
over her ashes, there,
the Jews in the Temple’s burning
chanted the prayer.

Over this mother,
Israel’s voice was sung.
I woke in a glittering cradle,
lit by a black sun.

Osip Mandelstam (1891-1938) I wonder what poem he would write for Gaza?

As Ramadan 2024 coms to an end, a Palestinian girl visits a family grave.: “But we, with a funeral song bringing home the dead …”
 

REFUGEE GOD

God has become a refugee, Sir

So:

Seize the prayer rugs from the mosque

Sell the church, which now belongs to someone else.

Sell the muezzin on the black market

Light the wicks of stars so they

Might light the way for wanderers

Even the father of our orphans can’t be found

Take them all away as well, sir!

(Rashid Hussein d 1977)

Gaza Homecoming February 2024

Rashid Hussein (1936-1977) was a Palestinian poet from Musmus, a village outside Umm al-Fahm. Like his contemporaries Mahmoud Darwish and Samih al-Qasim, Hussein was a ’48 Palestinian (that is, a second-class citizen of Israel). Educated in Hebrew and Arabic, Hussein wrote and translated volumes of poetry.