Forest of Noise: Poems

by Mosab Abu Toha

At fifth grade, I visit the school library. On a wall by the door, a poster claims, “If you read books, you live more than one life.” Now I’m thirty and whenever I look at faces around me, old or young, on each forehead I read: “If you live in Gaza, you die several times.”

upon birth, mask up your children and leave them unnamed so the angel of death can’t find them

I dream still about my grandfather, how much I want to pick oranges with him in Yaffa. But my grandfather died, Yaffa is occupied, and oranges no longer grow in his weeping groves.

In the refugee camp, where land is strewn with debris, where air chokes with rage, my harvest is yet to arrive, my seeds only sprout on this page.

Sir, we are not welcome anywhere. Only cemeteries don’t mind our bodies. We no longer look for Palestine. Our time is spent dying. Soon, Palestine will search for us, for our whispers, for our footsteps,

our fading pictures fallen off blown-up walls.

Now it’s 2024, and the cemetery you were buried in was razed by Israeli bulldozers and tanks. How can I find you now? Will my bones find yours after I die?