I Suffer A Phobia Called Hope - Maya Abu Al-Hayyat

[Lawrence Robinson]

I Suffer A Phobia Called Hope

Each time I hear that word
I recall the disappointments
that were committed in its name:
the children who don’t return,
the ailments that are never cured,
the memory that’s never senile,
all of them hope crushed
beneath its wings as I smash
this mosquito on my daughter’s head.

*

The grieving have only the unknown.
It’s their only staple and inheritance.
Pain has no logic. All things redeem
the grieving except your rational questions.

*

I wish that no one goes
and no one comes.
All going is a stroke of myth
and each return
a punctured lung.

	- Maya Abu Al-Hayyat
	(translated from the Arabic by Fady Joudah)