By Mohammed Abu Lebda
Mohammed Abu Lebda is a Palestinian poet and translator from Rafah, Gaza. His poetry has been published in Democracy in Exile, the journal of DAWN, and he has spoken about life under siege in interviews with NPR’s Here & Now and Democracy Now!. He continues to write from Gaza.
“The Translator’s Betrayal”
When on the stretcher, red with strife, The wounded raised his voice too high Not for the mending of his life, But that the Heavens mark the lie. He laid his grief upon the skies, A plea for justice, raw and vast; Yet to the stranger’s clinical eyes, I let the cold translation pass: “He suffers pain,” was all I said. I broke his soul, I broke his plea. I turned the sacred blood he bled To measured, plain pathology. I stripped the outrage from the groan, And offered for a cosmic scar A drop to numb the flesh alone— To leave the crime just as you are. No herald I, nor honest tongue, But silencer of human breath; I mute the songs that should be sung, And veil the cruelty of death. A heavy stone where stretchers glide, I take the scream in all its grace, Then wash away the truth inside To suit a quiet, clinical space. And when at last the wronged arise, And history counts the quiet dead, My nameless shame shall blind their eyes, In hidden ink, unsaid, unread. Across this dark and blood-stained floor, Where antiseptic shadows fall, I am no bridge, but locked a door A veil between the weak and all.