أعشاش فارغة

الضبابُ بخارُ كلمةٍ نُطقتْ ولم نسمعها.
الحائرات رأين هلالاً أرقَّ من خيطِ العنكبوت
مزّقه الصيادون.
آذانهنّ علاماتُ استفهام
سقطت أقراطُها في الوحل
برّاقةً كعينِ ببغاء
لم يُلقَّنْ إلا كلمةً وحيدة:
وداعاً.

© Golan Haji
Production audio: Haus für Poesie, 2019

Empty Nests

Fog is the vapour of a word uttered but never heard.
Perplexed women saw a crescent thinner than a spider's thread
torn apart by fishermen.
Their ears were question marks
whose earrings had fallen in the mud –
shiny as the eye of a parrot
which has come to learn just the single word :
Farewell.

Translated from Arabic by Golan Haji & Stephen Watts
published in A Tree Whose Name I Don’t Know by A Midsummer Night's Press, New York, 2017