Forest of Noise: Poems

by Mosab Abu Toha

If there are four directions, then why do we have only two feet?

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.

Through our bedroom’s wooden casement window, a breeze froze my makeup, but your kisses melted me down.

I’ve personally lost three friends to war, a city to darkness, and a language to fear. This was not easy to survive, but survival proved necessary to master.

Will my bones find yours after I die?

Thanks to my mother always,

She slept on her bed, never woke up again. Her bed has become her grave, a tomb beneath the ceiling of her room,

A group of mute people were talking sign. When a bomb fell, they fell silent.

I leave the door to my room open, so the words in my books, the titles, and names of authors and publishers, could flee when they hear the bombs.

Nakba, the year when Israel was founded after expelling 800,000 Palestinians and destroying 530 villages

and hundreds of tongues in the village no sound

If I am going to die, let it be a clean death. No rubble over my corpse, no broken dishes or glasses, and not many cuts in my head or chest. Leave my ironed untouched jackets and pants in the closet, so I may wear some of them again at the funeral.

Beautiful is not enough, not next to you,

I need you, Mother. You are my better heart when I feel I am about to die.

a generation under the rubble of their bombed houses;

I saw the best brains of my generation protruding from their slashed heads.

I know she is dead, but everyone who sees us runs after us. You are alive for a moment, when living people run after you.