Three Poems by Dalia Taha, trans. by Sara Elkamel

Ramallah-based poet and playwright Dalia Taha offers three poems that bear close witness to the occupation and genocide in Palestine — 'The sound of trees and children riding bikes through the windows. / The towers they blasted.' Originally written in Arabic, these poems meditate on the intimacy of objects, faces, and daily scenes amid an atmosphere of loss, grief, and destruction. The text's spare, beautiful English translations are by Sara Elkamel. 

Supported by a grant from the Open Society Foundations.

Enter Indiscernible Casualties of War  

The sea returning as you lift your nose from a book.  
The clouds above the city.
Walking below the clouds on your way back from the bookstore.
The street they uprooted. 
The sound of trees and children riding bikes through the windows. 
The towers they blasted.  
The stars drawn in pencil near captivating sentences. 
Thousands of pages. Millions of letters. 
Tables and shelves and windowsills lined with plants and books.  
Your friend’s library. The library you felt was just as much yours, 
for all the books you read together.
The books your friend read before she met you. 
And the ones she will read without you.
Novels, shelves, authors — all those strangers you lived with. 
The face of your beloved, sleeping beside you and buried by night. 
When nothing in the whole house is illuminated but the page you are on. 
You are not ready to set the book aside 
to switch off that last light 
for darkness to descend on the entire house.

Enter Old Notebooks  

When we read our old notes,
the words crossed-out  
and the words still kicking
equally ensnare us —
as do the woman 
and the grave she stands beside.  

The fountain too
ensnares us, 
together with the child 
whose hand reaches out to touch it.  

The notebook I am clutching now is ancient;
thirty years of skin 
and tears lie inside it, 
coupled with faces that have disappeared, 
and episodes from the nineties. 

Inside it is my handwriting at nine,
when language was a camera 
between my palms:
I took pictures of everything — 
I didn’t even care if it was good. 
All that mattered was to press the button, 
and listen to the FLASH. 

All that mattered  
was to throw snowballs at the world. 

Time passes,
and divisions grow obsolete:
Silence shakes hands with speech,
death with life, surviving words 
with those crossed out,
and the future 
shakes hands with the past. 

Picture how anger shakes hands 
with sorrow
on the face behind the keffiyeh.

Enter Glances  

There is yesterday, and there is today;
in the space between, eyes 
meet for brief seconds on the streets.  
Entire sentences go unspoken. 

Your house lights up 
the instant 
you close the door behind you and vanish.  

Look at people’s eyes, glistening as they speak
of what they love: sheep, heroism, dolphins,  

cake. Look at the smile that lingers on both faces
after they say hello and walk away.  

Look at the bodies wrapped 
in the flags of their nations; 
at the closing rituals of love.  

What will remain of us on this earth? 
Of this strange life, always missing 
one person.  

All of us 
are coursing clouds, 
dispersing 
before we find the words to describe them.  

'Enter Indiscernible Casualties of War' appears in the forthcoming collection, Enter World (Graywolf, 2026)

Cover image: The Palestinian University of Bir Zeit, 1976