In this wandering, immense poem, Olivia Elias, a poet of the Palestinian diaspora, shares the intimate elegy of the landless, travelling between voids, violences, and grief. Looking at the casualties of not only people and landscape, but also language, Elias’ rhythmic fragmentations hover and intuit around the immense unsayability of hell, in the guise of “civilized realities”. From precipices, from near-disappearances, and estranged by horror, by censorship, this poem is the work of a writer who sees her work—and its singular ability to give weight to negated spaces—as one of the few remaining places to situate life, and all of its losses.
I write from a lost place
on the edge of all edges
a land floating between presence and absence
I write & weave ropes of words
to overcome this Mountain
of fables & legends lies & betrayals
face the storms of fire resist the
hurricanes that would throw me
in abysses teeming with vipers
escape the soldiers judges & censors
on my heels
the new Khans & their powerful Allies require that I only use
words listed on their official registers while strictly complying
to the elements of language they carefully crafted over a
century ago
A land without a people For a people without a land
Bedouins on their camels and so on
among the forbidden words this one that starts with the first
letter of the alphabet using it means immediate excommuni
cation relegation into the last chamber of hell
—
I’m asked to talk about those ugly things that pollute my mind
& the air in a chastised manner as if they were civilized realities
الستعمار
الضم
المستعمرات
المستوطنون
الجر افات
نقاط تفتيش
السجون
الصو اريخ
تتسطح المناظر
تعقيمها
جز العشب
but Poetry doesn’t go along well with Savagery
it curls up in the face of horror looks
for the words that run away when
lightnings of fire tear the sky & monsters
of steel maneuver among the ruins
relentlessly I try & try again to climb
this Mountain of erasure & extinction
if I managed to reach the summit I could
relax (so it is said) in a celestial lake
but I keep falling down & I come to doubt more
the existence of heaven than that of hell
—
Nakba a monstrous word that feeds on our blood
Fire burn and cauldron bubble
sing the fateful witches
we die by the thousands & thousands
& the Powerful look away
we die by the thousands & thousands
& the Chief of the Great Nation of America
keeps his hand raised
Hear ye Hear ye good folks
The Conquerors Have Absolute Right to Safety
(translation: all permission given for depriving us of any
right & dispossessing us)
—
I sometimes wonder what kind of life I would have led if those
who came from the other side of the sea had settled elsewhere
(may be in Uganda or a South America country, options they
considered at a certain time)
I see large family gatherings children a lot of children peacefully
living their childhood lives
refugee in Poetry
I live the life that is mine
over which hovers the shadow
of a great Catastrophe
the volcano ignited by the new
Khans’ fury of vengeance
projects today its bloody lava
on all screens
Palestine & its people bleeding to death
burns fire, boils cauldron
sing the fateful witches
—
I recently asked a friend to send me some photos of flowers
from his island when fall comes I usually like to follow the
changes of the acacia tree through my window this year
its leaves turned from green to yellow then fell without my
noticing neither did I notice the river the birds the flowers
will there be flowers & strawberries
in the devastated Ghetto next springs
or just long winters of ignominy
cold hunger & despair
a part of the world’s beauty
innocence tenderness liesforever
in the land of Palestine
its hills & deserts cities & villages
Gaza Jabalaya Chadjaya Khan Younes Jerusalem
Bethlehem Hebron Jenin Nablus Huwara
how not to sink?
how to keep on writing
in this lost place
on the edge of all edges
this place that is mine
the question resonates
all around the world
in a huge explosion
obscuring the sun
Notes:
- Burns fire and cauldron bubble, Shakespeare, Macbeth, IV.
- Words in Arabic: colonization, annexation, settlements, settlers, bulldozers, check-points, jails, rockets, flatten the landscape, sterilize, mown the lawn.
This piece is appearing as a part of the ongoing series, All Eyes on Palestine, in which we present writings and dialogues surrounding the current crisis in Gaza and the lineage of violence perpetrated upon Palestine. Through the sharing of these works, we hope to honour Asymptote‘s role in elevating voices of witness during times of devastation and upheaval. We hear the Palestinian peoples, and we condemn the violation and deprivation of their human rights.
We continue to accept submissions for the All Eyes on Palestine series. Please direct submissions via email to blog(at)asymptotejournal.com.
Olivia Elias, born in Haifa in 1944, is a poet of the Palestinian diaspora who writes in French. After a childhood in Beirut, she moved to Montreal, then Paris. Her first book in English translation, Chaos, Crossing and Other Poems, was published by World Poetry Books in 2022.
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