In 2020, I had the idea of starting a literary magazine featuring writers from the Gaza Strip with the goal of introducing their work to the outside world. I shared my vision with many friends in the United States and England, who all thought it was an important project to support, and a few contributed financially.
One friend, Ammiel Alcalay spread the word among his circle and asked if he could help translate poems for the not-yet-born magazine. I assembled the works of six excellent writers to share with Ammiel, including the poetry of Nasser Rabah.
I first met Nasser when he reached out to me in the summer of 2017 through my younger brother, Hamza, a scholar of Arabic grammar and literature. Nasser would sometimes consult with Hamza about inflections on some words and whether the structure of a certain sentence was still an Arabic one.
I don’t remember a time when I met with Nasser or spoke with him on the phone when he did not ask if I could help translate and submit his poems to American publications. I always sensed how frustrating it was for him not to see his poems shared with others around the world. As a Palestinian writer, I know how suffocating it feels to remain stuck in Gaza, you and your writing.
If I were to pick only one poet from Gaza to be translated and published in the English-speaking world, this is who it would be. Nasser Rabah is my favorite living poet in Palestine. The language he uses in his poems is dazzling. His metaphors are like raindrops pouring over me after a long summer. The musicality of his lines could replace my heartbeats and I would feel more than alive.
While Nasser’s personal library now lies buried under the rubble of his house in the al-Maghazi Camp in the middle of the Gaza Strip, the poems have survived and are now destined to be read by thousands of readers, both in Arabic and English, here in the pages of Nasser’s first book in translation.
This revelatory collection gathers poems from three of his five published poetry books, and includes new work written during the ongoing onslaught against Palestine and Palestinian life in its every aspect.
The “poem said its piece,” and the responsibility now lies with us, readers and witnesses, to confront the implications for ourselves.
–Mosab Abu Toha
*
“Prelude”
O Lord…
This my soul, ripened in God’s alphabet when you said to me:
Be—then the poem flowed, hastening to its completion, where
perfection is an end. Wherever I cast my staff, the serpents of
my soul overflow and a yearning lip quivers for the milk of a
woman made of clouds. The body forgotten on language’s fire
brims over as astonishments and psalms, and I pass, all the
time, through the eye of its needle, the camels of my visions.
We were two, a king and a kingdom of writing, O Lord,
here’s my soul, done with words, now ripe for the picking.
*
I am no soldier, but I see myself in uniform during the war
when buying bread, when sleeping, and when I get resurrected
after the latest news. I arrange gunpowder on both sides
of the road leading to the cemetery, I plant whatever
shrapnel comes in handy in the fields of memory anytime
forgetfulness reaps forgiveness and friends, each time they
sever my arm, I raise the flag of tedium that never bends,
I bring together children and parents, the poor and the poor,
and I finish counting mothers’ tears for the prayer beads
of the story. I light the darkness of the heart with the candle
of fear, I dole it out on the walls—when the bombing starts—
a verse, a verse each. I restore what has been demolished of
the walls of time, I pick what has blossomed of my enemy’s
ammunition, and I teach the kids—if they ever grow older—
the timetable to pray for the country. I am no soldier, but
during the war I see myself a balcony hanging in the sky
after they kill the building, I watch how the neighbors rush
to asphalt beaches before the new wave of bombing,
how homes survive their injuries because of a novice pilot’s
error, the talent of a cameraman who brought their picture
to the hospital, and the luck they had in finding a doctor
skilled in home injuries, and how the ambulance stands
by at the gate of injustice, like a woman pregnancy
exhausted and the August sun made faint.
I am no soldier, but I see myself during the war an angel
applauding soldiers, a mother washing shrouds, a home
reassured by hanging on to the clothes of residents who
return every time they leave. I see myself, I guide the missile
mail to my pocket, then I crumble it like an electric bill.
I save their ball for the kids for after the war. They might
return with no legs. I wait for the tears, but they don’t
come—they too, like me, lost their watch and shadow
during the war and remained like that with no friends.
Who will raise the children to God before their cross?
Who will stop the living from circling around the news
like pilgrims? Who from the cliff overlooking the myth?
Who will give the city its share of bread before sleep
and a harbor for it to walk slowly like any other
city on the water of life?
Who will pull the civilian out of the military uniform,
the military from the uniform of the politician,
the politician from the uniform of the clergy,
and the clergy from the uniform of fools.
And who will pull the city out from
clothes double-crossing clothes?
I’m no soldier, but I see myself during the war arranging the
scene of the last death, to please with my death the living.
“No Mail for Years”
No mail for years, all I find in my hand every morning
is merely obscure scattered words, I waste the whole day
rearranging them in vain, a word like a dream that can’t
be interpreted, a language not mine engraved on the cold
stone of time, the racket and din of a street market where
I’m leftover goods. Not one full sentence or line whets
the desire for news I can verify, nothing to impart
real joy or sadness. No mail for years—
who’d want to write to a dead man?
______________________________
Foreword, “Prelude,” “A Balcony Hanging in the Sky,” and “No Mail for Years,” from Nasser Rabah’s Gaza: The Poem Said Its Piece (City Lights Pocket Poets Series No 64) © 2025 Nasser Rabah. Reprinted with the permission of City Lights Books.