The Little Girl from Gaza

Salman Masalha

The Little Girl from Gaza

The little girl from Gaza
builds nests
of sea feathers.
The man who stands by the wall
hides in his eyes a necklace
strung of memory leaves.

When the street runs
beneath untamed steps,
the nests cracks
open with legends.
Boys scamper
in the dusk colors.
They gather the muffled voice
from the desert sands.

 At evening,
the necklace scatters the beads
from the eyes, and moisten
the seapath.
Night
dispatches the smile
into exile.
The poet's soul
is spent in words.


Translated by Vivian Eden

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From: Rish al-Bahr (Sea Feathers), Zaman Publications, Jerusalem 1999.

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For the Arabic text, press here.
For Hebrew translation, press here.
For French translation, press here.
For German translation, press here.

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The Language Angels Speak

Salman Masalha

The Language Angels Speak

Presumably like all kids around the world, I was once asked an immortal question: What would you like to be when you grow up? Quite bizarre and abnormal in the circumstances and conditions I was born to, and unlike other children who have dreamed of becoming doctors, advocates, engineers etc., my answer always was: I want to be a poet. Those who might think in terms like self-achievement of a little child will soon find out that they were completely wrong. As it became clear to me later, being a poet is not a self-achievement in any way. After all it seems to me now a kind of punishment rather than a joyful experience. Nevertheless, the world of poetry is a kind of prison world in which residency is still worthy.

Poetry is a prison within the chaos of letters, signs, words, lines and all possibilities that language with its generosity provides for us. In this sense the role of a poet is comparable with the role of the First Creator who has set an order in the universe from within the wide and huge disorder. Poetry itself has no sense of time nor sense of place nor sense of nationality. In its very essence poetry holds all times, inhabits all places, experience all lives and talks to all nations at once. The language of poetry is the language of human experience despite color, sex and tongues. It is a meta-language that goes beyond the tongues scattered from Babel in the four directions of the wind. The language of poetry is the first sense of divine creation and the first spark of eternity. Furthermore, poetry is the tool with which poets compete with the work that was done by God. It competes with God for it tries to reshape His unfinished clumsy work. Optimists might say, He did not finish the job for reasons of unknown divine generosity, with the aim of leaving some space for the taste of living to the Earthly people. Pessimists, on the other hand, and surely they include poets and others who belong to different disciplines of the arts, will say: He didn’t do His work properly as it should be done.

In the beginning there were words in chaos, and darkness covered the cell of the primal prison. In a moment of will, the poet emerged from the darkness and collected all signs and letters and put them on paper. He picked up some of them and set them in the order: L. I. G. H. T. Then all off a sudden there was light. With this light he could see all words of all languages in their chaos. And that was the first day. That was the first poem.

With this light the real poet can see all meanings that potentially exist in languages. He can form the word of love and let others love their way. He can reshape the smell of existence and give some hope to the increasing miserable ones on Earth. He can speak out about death and beyond similes and metaphors aims to show the hidden meaning of life. With its few lines, poetry enables us to communicate with other peoples and reveal other cultures. It enables us to make wings of words and fly into other spheres and stop in other lands for language is the one and only promised homeland for a poet. Now, that time has passed and I am not a naive kid anymore, I have figured out another thing: Poetry is a supreme inner-net, a supreme maze that never lets you reach any end. Within this eternal maze the poet will exist until the Day of Judgment, when he is supposed to present his provocative alternative work in front of the first sole reader whom he competed with initially and all the way long. If the world was created and was put in focus by the light of poetry in on first day, no doubt this light will last until the end of days. Now, I have nothing but another wish: I wish I could live then in order to watch that last fight, that last light.

Finally, despite a Muslim tradition in which we are told that the inhabitants of the Garden of Eden speak the Arabic language, and despite the fact that it is the language angels speak, I can testify, from personal experience, that Arabic is the tongue in Hell as well.

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For the Arabic text, press here.

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The Poem

Salman Masalha

THE POEM

Empty the sea of its fish.
Bring clouds back to the river.
Wipe from the infant’s lips
the weight of pregnant women.
Branches of grief shade all.
And legends are sorrows
milked from widows’ breasts.
When prophets depart
do not report the loss.
And never never say
that hope hides in
the poem.


Translated by Vivian Eden with the author

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For the Arabic text, press here.

For French translation, press here.

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The Song

Salman Masalha

THE SONG

The Arab’s Speech

Every time I say I’m hungry
a military genius hands me a fishing pole
and sends me to catch some fish in the desert,
but I hook only scales.
And as I don’t drink sand,
I can’t pass my water. Moreover
I suffer from constipation.
And as I am hungry, and truly love life,
I eat my toes, because I so regret
I agreed to go out fishing
in murky sands.


The Jew’s Speech

Every time I say I’m hungry
a political genius sends me to drink
the sea water. Then I pass,
with my water, a fish without scales.
I am unable to dish it up on my table.
It’s strictly banned by religious law.
And as I am hungry, and truly love life,
I throw it back into the sea, where it dies of thirst
for I drank up all its water first.
I laugh out of sorrow, as in my current state
I can’t even die
of laughter.


The Silent Majority’s Speech

Death to the hungry!
Death to the hungry!


The Fish’s Speech

Silence is boring!
Silence is boring!
If you don’t stop,
I won’t talk
and I won’t pass water
any more.


The Poet’s Speech

Enough! When
will this song end?

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Translated from Arabic by Vivian Eden with the author

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Published in: Modern Poetry in Translation, third series, No. 14 (Polyphony), ed. David & Helen Constantine, Short Run Press, Exeter 2010

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For the Arabic text, press here.

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In Haifa by the Sea

Salman Masalha

In Haifa by the Sea

(In memory of Emile Habiby)


In Haifa, by the sea, the smells of salt
rise from the earth. And the sun
hanging from a tree unravels wind.
In a row of trees bathed in stone
men, women and silence have been
planted. Tenants in an apartment
block called homeland.
Jews whose voices I haven't heard,
Arabs whose meaning I haven't understood.
And other such melodies I couldn't
identify in the moment that went silent.


There in Haifa, by the sea,
he had them all. Poet, exile
in the wind, seeking the past
in a question blessed with answers.
Pulling words out of the sea and
throwing them back to the waves
that, like Messiah, will return eternally.
A poet has returned to a poem he never wrote
in the night of captivity, and hasn't yet returned
to the place that he drew as a child in a cloud.


There in Haifa, by the sea, at the end
of the summer that broke on the treetop,
a moon unfurled. I return to the
silence I had split with my lips.
I return to the words asleep inside
the paper. Moist clods of earth
and a salty path have forever wrapped
the fisherman's pole. Little
words lay down to rest, and a poem
went silent there in Haifa, by
the sea.


Translated from the Hebrew by Vivian Eden
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Published in: Haaretz Books, November 2008

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This poem is from, "In Place" (Am Oved, 2004). It is performed by singer Micha Shitrit on his album “Shilhei Kayitz.”
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For the Hebrew text, press here.

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