“Yes, we / who raise our flags on every occasion, / mention PαlesᎿᎥne twenty times in a sentence, / afraid to laugh for too long, / guilty over our fleeting small joys, / we the pursued / over our identities, / our places of birth, / and especially our burial lots, / we, kind and wicked, / heroic and obstinate, / the first to die and, if necessary, the last…”
— from “We”
TITLE—You Can Be the Last Leaf
AUTHOR—Maya Abu Al-Hayyat
TRANSLATOR—Fady Joudah
PUBLISHED—2022
PUBLISHER—Milkweed Editions
GENRE—poetry
SETTING—PαlesᎿᎥne
MAIN THEMES/SUBJECTS—love of all kinds, grief, life under occupation, indigeneity, settler colonial violence, imperialist & capitalist history & legacy, Fear, dreams, hope, resistance, endurance, children, Laughter, humanity, Art, fairy tales (bread crumbs, Aladdin), memory
“when they leave this world / without growing up into roaring laughter / or kindness to the needy / in the book of good deeds— / when little smiles don’t grow / a dream on a lover’s pillow / yet depart / with eyes green with hope— / that’s when the universe goes quiet / and whimpers.”
— from “That Smile, That Heart”
Summary:
“Frank, wry, devastating, Maya Abu Al-Hayyat's work is an absolute gift to behold, crystalline in Fady Joudah's translation, renewing my faith in language and the houses it can build. This is a powerful introduction to a poet who knows, ‘They will fall in the end, / those who say you can't." — Solmaz Sharif
“Although the poet eschews overt narrative, myriad stories are interwoven here, in the warp and woof of a lyric poetry, seamlessly rendered from language to language by fellow-poet Fady Joudah." — Marilyn Hacker
“Maya's poetry is breathtaking in its specificity and rendering of heart, land, loss, and love alike." — Hala Alyan
My thoughts:
I took my time with this collection. Reading & rereading it until I had let each word sink gently but indelibly into flesh, into bone, into blood—into soul. I sit down to write out my thoughts on this collection the morning after the Ꭱafah Massacre. But what could I possibly say, now? I sit & in one hand I hold this book & in the other I hold the music of Rafeef Ziadah, Clarissa Bitar, Rola Azar, Rim Banna, Lina Makoul… I want to hear their voices.
That is all.
“They will fall in the end, / those who say you can’t. / It’ll be age or boredom that overtakes them, / or lack of imagination. / Sooner or later, all leaves fall to the ground. / You can be the last leaf. / You can convince the universe / that you pose no threat / to the tree’s life.”
— “You Can’t”
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
CW // gεηοcᎥdε, grief (Please feel free to DM me for more specifics!)
Season: all of them
Music pairing: “We Teach Life,” by Rafeef Ziadah
Further Reading—
RIFQA by Mohammed El-Kurd
THINGS YOU MAY FIND HIDDEN IN MY EAR by Mosab Abu Toha
BLOOD ORANGE by Yaffa As
BEFORE THE NEXT BOMB DROPS by Remi Kanazi
SALT HOUSES by Hala Alyan
NAMESAKE by NS Nuseibeh
(I earn commissions from the sponsored links to my shop on bookshop.org which allow me to keep my content like Book Reviews & Reading Lists free to all subscribers. However all of the commissions I make from any PαlesᎿᎥnᎥαn-authored books purchased through my shop will be donated to families in Gαzα. <3)
Favorite Quotes—
from the Foreword by Fady Joudah:
“What she sees does not turn her into a seer. She mocks heroism, dislikes “great” men, and believes in smiling ear to ear whenever she can believe in nothing. You will hear and taste her laughter and also yours. Because laughter is “the excess knowledge no one takes seriously,” the cherished identity smuggled out of psychology and surveilled consciousness. The poet celebrates survival as a last leaf in autumn is sister to the first leaf in spring.”
from “My House”:
“…but lately my organs and body parts / have been complaining of inexplicable ailments. / My arms extend higher than a tree. / My acromegaly. And when I run
it’s at inconsistent speeds. / The important thing is to pass those walking / closest to me, leave them behind / before they leave me.”
“then I studied engineering, / specialized in earthquakes / to build houses whose foundations / resist climates and the unpredictable.”
“In a text, I can build a house / with windows and balconies / that overlook galaxies and stars…”
from “A Road for Loss”:
“My children will grow, / their questions will multiply, / and I don’t tell lies, / but teachers distort my words. / I don’t hold grudges, / but neighbors are always nosy. / I don’t rebuke, / but enemies kill. / My children grow older…”
“I don’t dare to speak. / Whatever I speak of happens. / I don’t want to speak. / I’d rather be lost.”
from “What If”:
“Every time I leave the house, / it’s suicide.”
“…What if / I find what I’m looking for? / I want to return home whole. / I mark the roads with crumbs / to help me come and go / until the birds / eat all my bread.”
from “Ordinary Grief”:
“And just as death ceases to be / a logo of end or separation, / I loved you for life / to become elegant, dignified, / useful, for the seasons / to succeed one another / rhythmic and precise, / for cruelty to rationalize / our capacity to resist, endure. / There’s no doubt or denial. / Look at them, my sighs / as they rise for twenty years.”
from “Fear”:
“I am therefore / they point their rifles at me.”
“Can you address me / with reason, without it all falling apart, / your adages, myths, and creeds? / I am the deliverer of illusory happiness / in solid societies…”
“he’s trembling in the dark, / rummaging for the bliss of one / who’s accepted / that this is as good as it gets.”
“I am their master’s servant: / I lead them to obedience, to faith: / that his order is better / than the chaos that would terminate them. / As long as you stare into my eyes, I shall remain. / As long as you are another. / As long as you are eternal.”
from “We”:
“yes mothers / who regurgitate their sorrows and mottoes / as stories regurgitate us, / year after year, we cry and cry / until we cry no more / and stop joking around. / We showed our hand too soon, / we know who we are.”
from “I Don’t Ask Anymore”:
“You passed through here / like a miracle.”
from “Massacres”:
“Massacres teach me not to wait… / Callously I pass through memories.”
“Nothing’s forever. / Not success or laziness, / not dithering or labor, / even dazzling verse / grows onerous, / and to stumble or shatter / is sometimes beautiful.”
“I keep running in empty rooms / to begin my day as if yesterday didn’t end / and tomorrow won’t come. / And before I cast my curses / on those who persevere in loneliness / and hesitate to return my greetings, / I remember how often in the chill / we leave tender skin / bloodied, alien, and dry.”
“Your Laughter”:
“The day you explain your laugh to anyone / should never come. Your laugh would lose / its prestige. Laughter / is the excess knowledge no one takes seriously. / And if someone deplores your peals, / pity them, wish them well, / and go after your chuckles / full throttle.”
from “Return”:
“…need clips the wings of dreams / and the legs of the righteous.”
from “Art”:
“Only you can lie / as you tell the truth / and make it possible.”
from “Revolution”:
“Those who win by killing fewer children / are losers. / A land that promises heaven / is an impoverished land.”
from “We Were Young, You Gave Us a Home”:
“We thanked you when we were sick / and when they were sick / until we got tired of giving thanks / and went back to ask our teacher why / we were so tired. / Then we remembered / that we were young / and that you had given us a home / that wasn’t always warm / but had your Aladdin’s lantern.”
from “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…”
“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.”
from “Sex”:
“This is enmity: / it affords us the luxury / of being forgotten, / though like pleasure / it never forgets us.”
from “My Laugh”:
“I’m exhausted from smuggling my laugh out of my psychology, / smuggling my laugh out of the fates of those I love…”
from “Since They Told Me My Love Won’t Be Coming Back from the War”:
“Since they told me my love / won’t be coming back from the war, / I’ve been writing our children’s names / on clouds and in journals… / and once and for all / I learned that all of them / won’t be coming back from the war, / and neither will I.”
from “I’m Not Saying You Lie”:
“You’ve prepared everything for our death: / shrouds, dreams, and chants, / rockets, hate, and myth.”
from “I Don’t Believe in Greats”:
“I don’t believe in survival. / I live in other people’s stories / like a rock suspended in space: / it doesn’t drop and can’t.”
“Each time an opportunity arises for me to not believe in one thing / or another I smile from ear to ear / to let all this freedom in.”
from “Trash”:
“Why did I love you / in February and not in March, / when our wild rosebush, neglected / by the gate, blooms? / Why not when the neighbors’ jasmine fills / the street with dreams? / Why not in a different season, / when the entire village, / women, men, children, and dogs, / harvest olives / with their hands and teeth, / and my name on their lips / would urge me to shake / the thickest trunk / with my gnarly incisors / and rapid stirs?”
from “Almost Dead, Almost Alive”:
“Everyone’s crossing the streets with their caskets. / They see what I see only by chance, / as when our eyes meet in mirrors or funerals.”
from “Psychology News”:
“She’s me. Each time I try to get past myself / I return to zero. / Neither foundation nor green smiles helped me / to resemble other women. / I am an apricot / that did not reach your mouth.”
“I loved the sea at the edge of a map. / It seduced me in geography textbooks. / This is my country, that is my sea, / and here is my elegant lie.”
from “In Love”:
“In love, one loses something. / The other, who loses everything, / deserves the title of lover.”
from “About Him”:
“I was drowning up to my fingertips / in intention / and didn’t survive.”
from “What She Left In You”:
“Whenever happiness surrounds your halo / you close your eyes and grow sad. / Did you know that dialogue is led by two: / you and what she left in you? / Open your eyes. / There are things I want to say still.”