Half- Life In Exile by Hala Alyan
'...There is nothing more terrible than waiting for the terrible. I promise."
#ReadPalestineWeek. Seven days of Palestinian poetry: day six.
Hala Alyan is a Palestinian-American poet, writer and clinical psychologist. She is the author of two novels and five collections of poetry, including her latest, The Moon that Turns You Back, from which today’s poem is taken.
HALF-LIFE IN EXILE
I'm forever living between Aprils.
The air here smells of jacarandas and lime;
it's sunset before I know it. I'm supposed
to rest, but that's where the children live.
In the hot mist of sleep. Dream after dream.
Instead, I obsess. I draw stars on receipts.
Everybody loves the poem.
It's embroidered on a pillow in Milwaukee.
It's done nothing for Palestine.
There are plants out West that emerge only after fires.
They listen for smoke. I wrote the poem
after weeks of despair, hauling myself
like a rock. Everyone loves the poem.
The plants are called fire-followers,
but sometimes they grow after the rains. At night,
I am a zombie feeding on the comments.
Is it compulsive to watch videos?
Is it compulsive to memorize names?
Rafif and Ammar and Mahmoud.
Poppies and snapdragons and calandrinias:
I can't hear you. I can't hear you under the missiles.
A plant waits for fire to grow.
A child waits for a siren. It must be a child.
Never a man. Never a man without a child.
There is nothing more terrible
than waiting for the terrible. I promise.
Was the grief worth the poem? No,
but you don't interrogate a weed
for what it does with the wreckage.
For what it's done to get here.Just in case you missed yesterday’s poem…
One more day of Read Palestine Week to go… Time really does fly!
Until then,
Tasnim