Poetry picks: Six poems by Indian and international poets about their lives and realities

I Often Dream

by Najwan Darwish, translated from the Arabic by Kareem James Abu-Zeid

I often dream that the waves of Haifa’s sea
are dunes of blue
and that an ageless camel driver
is emerging from them,
dragging the days behind him.
He stops, for a little while, beneath my window
so I can give him everything
the Arabs have laid away with me:
the openings of unrecited poems,
and wars that never ended.
I give him all of it,
all their desperate love.

And as he’s loading these troves onto his steed
I convince him to take my life as well,
for which I’ve found no city,
and my city,
for which I’ve found no life.
And I wave to him as he cuts across the dunes of blue,
returning with his haul.

My joy is indescribable:
The Mediterranean
has become a sea of dunes.

I Recall It Was Different

(an excerpt from Walk Song)

by David Herd

I recall it was different, yes,
And those days were more than brutal
The iron, I remember,
Went in deep
Fixed
Against the sun
And where we had imagined
The future
Eclipsed
Towards the land
This was the logic
We had become

Lament

by Habib Tengour, translated from the French by Will Harris and Delaina Haslam

Out of nowhere
and everywhere this voice O

Perhaps a groan in the Dahra caves
as you cross the station platform

Trick of the repressed, image superimposed
you no longer believe in ghosts

Chained in your flesh you crawl
hundred-legged beast

Careful staging
throats poised on the razor’s edge

Intense shine of faces breached by the text

Speech postponed

Sara Cohen

by Anitha Thampi, translated from the Malayalam by AJ Thomas

(written in tune with a Jewish song in Malayalam)

Are you listening to my words,
O Compassionate, Mighty...

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