Against the mirrors of erasure and the betrayals of history, a lyrical sanctuary where the memory of the oppressed rises from the ashes of the cross

Do not forget your face

In the mirrors of others.

For features, like maps

In an enemy’s hand,

Carry the scent of the dead—

We did not see their limbs

Patrolling the walls in the lives of the narrators.

Set a stone between your words and theirs

So your voice may leave a trace

Revealing their hidden schemes.

For their shadows lean upon you,

Stretching over the wall,

As though the dead themselves

Had watched them pace

Through the chambers of strangers

Just to stay alive.

With the quick wit of a sparrow

Caught between a hunter’s fingers,

With the body whose very limbs 

Are bewitched by it

With the serpent contemplating its sin

On the apple of vision,

With the remnant of regret

That bleeds along the edges of your day, 

With what tomorrow inherits

From the lines of your hands,

With the pain

Before which tyrants’ foreheads 

Have bowed.

Find your final turning glance

In their mirrors,

Then return

With the hollow ringing of its defeat

To the bells

Of the linage’s rams.

Your wrists upon the cross

May haunt them

If they see you rise

From among the graves.

And in their narratives,

Your standing among them,

Between the stones of counsel,

May take shape

Like wind

On the stairways of paradise—

Higher

Than their betrayal

Of your salt

On the road to resurrection.

It is not your voice

That speaks

So they may see your eyes

Descend from the cross

To gather the scattered limbs

Of your shadow.

Not your voice—

Only the ache

Of remembering.

Mary waited for you alone

In the stories

Told by sinners.

These councels are inspired by the advice of his mother, which he wrote under the title “The Ten Counsels of Fawziya Al-Hassan
Translated by Najwa Juma

Abdulla Issa

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Abdulla Issa: Poem ‘The dance of the naked’

Naked , he wears a necktie
To hide his nakedness with the skins of the victims,
Preparing his speech
For the rites of his own funeral.
Afflicted with ruins and despair,
Beneath David’s sling,
I never began a war
So that it might end.

For two centuries
I have shored up a land
Promised to me alone
With a ram’s twin horns.
Brought to me as a ransom by the heaven’s folks
I shall no longer be a god to any soldier,
To see myself wandering the corridors of a miracle
That never comes.
No prophet will find peace
Planting myrtle in the shade of my grave;

No victor, fattened on my hatred-
Not even by a fingertip-
Will dare to stare into the eyes of the wretched,
the maimed,
Or those stripped of hope,
Of any hope at all, in life
Nor those useless who hate me.
Who guide my people to the brink of disaster.
Nothing resembles me but my kingdom
A woman with her dog
Fled twenty years ago from Crimea,
And settled in Hebron, cried it out-
Bring back to me the body of my son,
Tormented in the war of Ukraine,
And the life of my grandson,
Held hostage in the depths of Gaza’s tunnels!
You- who have driven my people
With the whips of sins.
Someone casts his voice into the space between them-
There is no place where we can feel safe
For our tomorrow except through our journeys,
No refuge sufficient to bury us in,
No riddles that could, after your death,
Be turned into miracles
Of your dwelling among the lives of the ancients.
And a child, who saw what he saw
In the corridors of Al- Shifa Hospital,
Cries out:
Look at him!
He is the one-
Naked,
Driven by the deeds of his hands
Those who stoned the prophets, naked.

Abdulla Issa

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Abdulla Issa: Poem ‘Strolling in the gardens of the dead’

The postman did not care
for the letters left behind,
in mailboxes

hardened by telegrams bearing the obituaries of the ancestors,

and he found no trace of the addresses
that vanished with the lives of their residents
beneath the rubble of neglected houses.

As if the last October of all the months
Was whipping us
from between our legs toward the Wall of Resurrection,

drawing the dead out
of the ancient scroll
Believing what they foretold,
heralding its ruin in the margins of ancient myths,
and among the gerbils that dug up the graves of the dead.

It makes yarrow sprout beneath the fingernails
of corpses that were once soldier—
rained fire and darkness upon us.

I saw a woman who wished to draw her child back into her womb;
Even the graves are unsafe, she screams.

I saw a child who could not find
the shadow of his own arms
cast upon his brother’s shoulders
in their last embrace;
as if the death of light in his eyes
were like another shell
colliding with your entire head.

I saw a young woman mourning her life before the cameras:
This is my beloved
They brought him back in a body bag

I don’t believe what the dead recount,
says the history teacher,
For geography , there is use in your remaining logged
in longing for yourself-
there-
where you lay a posthumous feast for the family’s slain
And you chase the darkness,
In pursuit of those
Who once lurked around our white shadows,
Within the scrolls.

Do not bury the remains of the oleander at the edge that lake,

Do not mourn your own dying before you wore the crown of thorns,

Waiting for the resurrection on the road to the sky.
A nun says to a soldier she saw the devil’s index finger on his trigger:
I am no longer hungry or completely afraid,
I don’t want a warm loaf of bread or a glass of cold water.
No refuge or candle
But only a grave,
And let it be communal ,
Shared with the sparrows who have dreamed of
Trees, rivers that embrace us,
Forests that pray for us on the mountains,
Cave explorers whose lineages became heritage of our first drawings,
And a people, caught between two alters, cursing their killer.

Abdulla Issa

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