"[The day begged for a single laugh],” Nasser Rabah

The day begged for a single laugh, but found none. The
woodcutter came with an axe of despair and returned
without hands. A woman, in the last stages of her
pregnancy, asked: Where do they sell the milk of hope?
I watched them, and from my eyes flowed the birds of
exhaustion. We are the invaders of our streets; we are
the killed, and we are the killers. When ordinary people
wore military clothes, and the military wore the
uniforms of politicians, and the politicians wore the
uniforms of jurists, and the jurists became caliphs and
sold ordinary people certificates of paradise, until God
brought the torrent of strangers, and the pomegranate
of Gaza was scattered. We are the invaders of our truth.
It crumbled in our hands, and we sat listening to the
sound of our fragility, stubbornly claiming it was just
glass breaking at a neighbor’s wedding. We are the
eaters of history’s poisoned flesh. We worship history’s
idols, drink its tears, sing its song, and have no future.

Nasser Rabah was born in Gaza in 1963. He got his BA in agricultural science in 1985 and worked as director of the communication department in the Agriculture Ministry. He is a member of the Palestinian Writers and Authors Union and has published five collections of poetry and two novels. He lives in Gaza.

Artwork by Mohammed al-Haj.