YOU CAN BE THE LAST LEAF by Maya Abu Al-Hayyat
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
“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)
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