Just Like You, Mother

1

Just like you, I am here: I don’t exist.

I set myself up to imitate your lost

words: not belonging to any is my only

trick. Just like Palestinians,

we belong to nothing, and we have a feel

for tragedies, catastrophes, and setbacks.

It is a simple play that has no professional

actors. Our drama fills the screens 

and no one acts. 

          We are real but we don’t exist.

Have the years of exile taken any

meaning

          yet?

Lose the land, the tongue, and the mother.

Lose them harder and faster! We’ve exceeded all

measures

          and have mastered nothing but that “one art.” 

2

We have no longing for halfhearted realities. No nostalgia

or fake tears.

          We’ve mastered the real, and the world

                      is not interested: Darwish sharpened his

extended metaphors at a time when hope was still possible.

The girl from Gaza he transformed into

a scream was just killed two days ago. There are no

homecomings to occupy the mind and calm the rest-

less soul. Apparently: pure pain without privilege

is possible.

3

Without the privilege of pretense, at lease for a moment,

Gaza ... should I say, lives or dies? Or is there “a third state”

where the ones massacred can pretend to be alive?

4

Just like you, mother, I am, we are, what?

—what did all these chopped trees do to deserve being

reduced to pieces                     is there

room in the dust underneath our steps

for more dismembering?

Just like you, mother, Palestine is a cloud passing

on every mind? Its people?     And the world continues

         to offer us what we cannot take.

5

Just like you, mother, trees live on their own terms, and wherever they fall      is home.