Abdullah Issa   (A Palestinian poet)

Like a lost rat in a women’s prison

Chased by insults, dirty underwear, and shoes.

 Alone now, you measure the distance between your trembling shadow on the wall and the fading light between your eyes

 In the dark corner.

 What is the wind doing in the pocket of your torn pants, wet with your fear of the jailer’s long tongue,

And his big fists?

 What was it that made passersby

 On the city streets not apologize whenever their shoulders quickly bumped into your thin chest?

 And your good friends, like a naive joke, smile at the security patrol that took you to where there is no tree to climb with it to the river,

 And no woman to follow every morning to regret in the evening that you did not say to her: Good morning, princess?!

 Nothing here indicates anything there

 Oh snail whose home they removed from its back.

—–

This is… Me

Tell them:

He who casts a stone to count the circles in the river

will hurt the gravel, algae, and unsuspecting fish,

Therefore, do not allow the disobedient to fill up your well twice

and pinch an ember that has left its shadow in your hearths

that you may see in the water the expression of a star that has fallen in the imagination of strangers

Do not look at me from behind the hills

or you won’t see me

He who is without sin

and eyes – despondent out of despair

let him follow me and step into my cottage

I am the one to be called, and I come

.—

Just Try…

If you don’t weep

like the wind among the shadows of hoopoes,

just try…

As if a lady charged you with having colored ancestries

and then came back to dwell in the grave overlooking the garden.

I wasn’t blind to see that I have unlit eyes

since I saw the equator with your guidance

and the small earth rocked me here and my loved ones there…

like one who embraces his own corpse in a cold bed

If you don’t cry like me after this,

just try

.–

You’re Not Like Other Women

Do not tell her as her lovers did when they saw her

and went down on her knees: I love you.

She is not like other women, and she resembles none in the mirrors but herself.

Vineyards turn into wine if she touches them with her bored breath,

She never drinks wine save on her birthdays all alone

Countless men wait with bouquets of roses

And with a scent desired in the mirrors that have shriveled.

Be not be like them

The city might love its conqueror more between two wars,

or a field sparrow might travel higher above the horizon among the fingers of desperate hunters.

Women are like water. Be the scent of their hands that they may come back to you

Never complain about them but to them

that you may see in their mirrors all the mulberry that God has hidden from others but you in his kingdom.

She loves a man for loving her. be a beloved, not more,

and she will give you the two apples of her two Edens

The only one

who’s never dated anyone but you

says a lot about love when she gazed at her yesterday.

—

An Incomplete Biography

He’s never told anybody what he’d seen after the strangers’ visit

But he went on crying against the trunk of the olive tree that still stands in front of the house,

naked,

when he remembered that the handles of those daggers

that amputated his fingers were made of wood.

He never called anyone. They were all gone

leaving the last talk on the sides of the floors chattering

and their dreams torn to pieces on mats made of reed.

He wished he’d gone like them.

*****

Poet Abdullah Issa

‏A Palestinian poet, born on 15 January 1964, into a family that took refuge in Syria after the occupation of Palestine in 1948, and lived in Babila camp on the outskirts of the capital Damascus.

‏-He won the Poetry Prize in 1983, and was consideredone of the symbols of renewal in contemporary poetry in the 1980s.

‏-He graduated from the Maxim Gorky Institute of Literature – Department of Poetry in 1995, and received a Doctorate in Literature from the Institute of Asian and African Literatures of Moscow Central University in 2000, where he lectured and taught poetry.

‏He also received an academic degree in 2021 in recognition of his contributions to the fields of culture and creativity.

‏-He won many titles, the most important of which are the poet of Palestine in exile, and the poetic voice of Palestine.

‏He won many Arab and international awards, the most important of which are:-

‏*The World Literature Fund chose him as Person of the Year in the Dialogue of Cultures and Civilizations in 2014

‏*Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas awarded him the Medal of Merit in Culture, Science and Arts – Innovation Level 2015

‏*Chekhov Medal for Creativity 2017

‏*”Golden Feather” Award in 2019

‏*Medal of the International Association of Writers’ Unions 2024

‏-He published many books of poetry, including:

‏Dead people preparing the funeral, Alaa, the ink of the first sky, the resurrection of the walls, the shepherds of the sky, the shepherds of the oleander, my brothers, O father, not the wolf, the commandments of Fawzia Al-Hassan, there where the shadows groan, the completed poetic works, and the sky of Gaza, the hills of Jenin.

‏-In criticism, among his most notable works are:

‏-Critical vision, word and spirit in contemporary poetry, poetics of aesthetic creation, and methods of contemporary Arab artistic expression.

‏And also in the theater, such as “The Kingdom of Demons”.-

‏-It was translated into many languages, and it was hosted and honored by many Arab and international festivals.

-Won the Palestine International Prize for Literature – Poetry in 2024