A much-anticipated follow-up to Nothing More to Lose, this is only the second poetry collection translated into English from a vital voice of Arabic literature.
βWe drag histories behind us,β the Palestinian poet Najwan Darwish writes in Exhausted on the Cross, βhere / where thereβs neither land / nor sky.β In pared-down lines, brilliantly translated from the Arabic by Kareem James Abu-Zeid, Darwish records what RaΓΊl Zurita describes as βsomething immemorial, almost unspeakableββa poetry driven by a βmoral imperativeβ to be a βcolossal record of violence and, at the same time, the no less colossal record of compassion.β Darwishβs poems cross histories, cultures, and geographies, taking us from the grime of modern-day Shatila and the opulence of medieval Baghdad to the gardens of Samarkand and the open-air prison of present-day Gaza. We join the Persian poet Hafez in the conquered city of Shiraz and converse with the Prophet Mohammad in Medina. Poem after poem evokes the humor in the face of despair, the hope in the face of nightmare.
This English-only edition does not include the poems in their original language.