Barely There: Short Poems

by Yahia Lababidi

The flashy poets and the poets with a schtick get the big audience, but it is the quiet poets whose individual poems more often linger with me. I'd trade all of Ginsberg, say, for William Bronk's six-line poem "After Bach" which derives from the cello suites the lesson that sadness "can be in part /to accept the absence of One to say it to" And it is Bronk whose work is called to mind for me by Yahia Lababidi's Barely There, in which "in embracing, we let go"' - H. L. Hix, Author of First Fire, Then Birds

Genres: Poetry

86 pages, Paperback

First published August 23, 2013

About the author

Yahia Lababidi is an Arab-American writer of Palestinian heritage and the author of sixteen books of poetry, aphorisms, essays, and conversations, including Palestine Wail (Daraja Press, 2024). His new book is If You Cannot Say Genocide (New Village Press, 2026) Essays on Conscience and Witness.

His forthcoming book Wherever You Are: Essays from East to West (Ayin Press, 2027) is available for pre-order. A cross-cultural meditation on art, faith, and moral imagination, it moves between figures such as Nietzsche, Kafka, Rumi, Ghazali, and the poets of Palestine.

Recent books include On the Contrary: Wilde and Nietzsche (Fomite Press, 2025), a playful meditation on two kindred contrarians, and What Remains to Be Said (Wild Goose Publications, 2025), a gathering of aphorisms written across three decades.

Lababidi’s writing has appeared in Liberties, Salmagundi, The Threepenny Review, Sojourners, World Literature Today, The New Arab, and DAWN, and has been featured on PBS NewsHour, NPR, and On Being. A five-time Pushcart Prize nominee, he has spoken at Oxford University and served as a juror for the Neustadt International Prize for Literature and the PEN/Heim Translation Fund.

His work has been translated into numerous languages and read at literary festivals across the United States, Europe, the Middle East, and India.

Reviews

[Thomas George Phillips]

Mr. Lababidi is both an idealist and an intellectual. His aphorisms drive that point home. One critic describes him as such: "I find myself pausing everywhere among these wisdoms, wondering why the world stumbles and staggers through such a dark and greedy time when there are people alive with such keen, caring insight. . .If Yahia Samir Lababidi were in charge of a country, I would want to live there." I don't believe I would take it that far. The world we presently live in has outlawed idealists and intellectuals.

No intellectual or idealist leader would engage a nation in a foreign war when that nation is not under direct threat. Nor would said leader allocate billions of dollars abroad to fund such a war. The war in Ukraine with Russia comes to mind. Both Putin and Zelinsky are modern day czars. Poverty, homelessness, crime would, it seems to me, appeal to this intellectual leader first and foremost to combat.

But I digress. Find below examples of Mr. Lababidi's aphorism:

EXCHANGES

What unexpected turns our losses to take
in winding their way back into our arms:

an absent lover returns as many others,
a nation forsaken in the shape of a new life;

poems might take the place of parents
and friends gone come back as a wife.

If love were not always a step ahead
how would it ensure we kept up the chase?

ST SEBASTIAN

Sometimes, he found it difficult
to dislodge the arrows
preferring to keep them alive there
reverberating in silence
along with his invisible wounds.

THE OPPOSITE OF VIRTUE

One might say, a vice is a vise
never mind if metal or moral,
it's basically the same device

with cunning moveable jaws
designed to fix us in place
and cheat us of a change at grace

Impervious to all advice, habit
hotly whispers false reassurance
with tightening is iron grip

It takes no effort to slip into vice,
but virtue is trickier to stick to
like the back of a bucking bronco.

[Robert]

Master aphorist Yahia Lababidi brings his acute observations on the human condition to poetry. This book is a must for fans of Rumi, Hafiz or Gibran.

[Sarah]

"Gaze
A loving gaze is
sun, water and soil
for a soul to grow."

[Maher Battuti]

The poems of Mr. Lababidi ( Poet. Aphorist. Seeker ) take us back to pure poetry with their imagery, metaphors and deep sensations. We read about "the difficult doors of opportunity" which "suddenly yield at the key"; and "the intricate network of noise ". The feelings in the poems are superb. sensed more and more on re-reading.
A wonderful book of poetry...