POETRY
Arabic Literature /Arabic Poetry
So We Don’t Sleep
— POEM : Souad Zakarani
(Translated from Arabic)
I’m afraid to close my eyes,
O mother,
Your eyelash raises one question after another.
There’s a story in your eyes—speak it.
Words yawn on my tongue,
They’ve lived there long enough.
Arise, O rubble,
Come out of me!
I no longer want to cradle you.
Perhaps I could breathe,
With a body freed from shrouds.
Send her out of our home.
Can we tidy the house one last time
Before we’re displaced?
Can we photograph it for memory—
Store our laughter, our tears, our screams—
Then leave?
O sea stacked before us,
Like a shy embrace,
In a world not ours,
Can you send our echo to nearby oceans,
That a giant whale may strike the occupier’s base?
Can we invent a new alphabet
For fear, for pain, for home?
So the world hears,
That gray, continuous sound above us—
________________
Under our balcony,
A seamless sleep that tickles the stars.
I want… to yawn.
I want… to sleep.
________________
Buzzing planes,
Roaring rockets,
Above green, above ruin,
Above a gravestone,
Scrawled in charcoal on a burnt house,
The trace of a firebelt…
We won’t tell them, “We said… and we said…”
A thousand times, the eyes sip from the sky,
While we search for warmth,
To gently carry us to sleep.
Under our balcony,
A seamless sleep that tickles the stars.
I want… to yawn.
I want… to sleep.
I dreamed of some leader speaking—
Do you hear, mother?
I see you laughing, feeding the birds.
I see you playing on the swing of paradise,
Iridescent colors glowing in a rainbow slumber,
Like a bottle shaken—dreams all mixed inside.
O mother, I swear I saw it:
One shroud in Gaza holding,
The bodies of three martyrs.
So I became a worn, wounded body
Groaning with pain.
I want to hear the heartbeat of the sun—
Or the heart itself… that sponge,
Which has grown hard.
That’s how we walk—on feathers—
Until we reach the peak of exhaustion.
In full daylight, and say:
O Christ… tomorrow…
We shall live here.
….
(Translation from ARABIC)
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Souad Zakarani
Souad Zakarani is a Casablanca-based poetess, translator & writer. Her first publication by BRENTANO GESELLSCHAFT was quite the experience that improved her writing process. As she writes in four languages (Arabic, French, German, Spanish and English), capturing the beauty of fleeting moments with gentle contemplation. So, she has developed a style that aims to blend traditional form aesthetics with contemporary sensibilities. And, she always strive to find the extraordinary in the ordinary. Moreover, she has published her poems in the anthologies from Austria, Germany & Spain.
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