Sing

2979-2762

The Hythe Review

2979-2762

Open Library of Humanities

10.16995/thr.29424

Poetry

Two Poems

Rabah

Nasser

El-Tamami

Wiam

01 06 2026

2026

1 1 1 4

2026

This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC-BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. See http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

Two poems by Nasser Rabah. Translated from the Arabic by Wiam El-Tamami.

Sing

When you wake up from

the war, sing. Let your voice

ring long and free, from day’s

break till its end. Like an eagle

tasting, for the first time,

the fallen crumbs of the sun.

Let it climb to the top

of the minaret, chasing

the angels. Sing

with the wisdom of

old women, with the salty

ramblings of the mad.

Musical as the wailing

of mothers at a funeral, tuneless

as the gibberish

of the tanks. Just sing.

Sing, so you’ll know how much

you’ve cried. How much absence

you’d tucked away in the pockets

of your silence. How many mirrors

you had broken to avoid

watching your soul dancing

on the shards. Sing so you will

know how many senses

you’ve lost. How many

prayers slipped between your

fingertips. Sing —

because they’re calling your name

now, and you are also out looking

for you. Sing so we can keep painting

our houses with song, our city

with children’s supplications. Sing,

for the war has left you

with nothing

but singing.

Heart Reader<xref ref-type="fn" rid="n1">*</xref>

In absence, in

presence, You appear —

reading even the grass

in the wilderness of my silence,

and the name of the birds whose beaks

bloom open the pain in my heart. You hear me

in the drowsy stillness, behold my shadow

and my sun, bear witness as I rise and as I

break. You watch over the children, noisy

in their dreaming, over an eternal blue

raincloud hurtling behind hope.

How could it be no,

when my heart thrums with yes

for You? How can I not be bursting

with gratitude — my voice

awash in tears as I overflow

with love for You? You,

who have created me

from nothing

* With thanks to Ammiel Alcalay for his input on this translation.

Biographies

Nasser Rabah is a Palestinian poet and novelist who lives in Gaza. He has published six poetry collections and two novels, and his work has been translated into several languages. Gaza: The Poem Said Its Piece, his debut collection in English translation, was published by City Lights in April 2025 and was on the The New York Times Best Poetry Books of the Year list. His work has also been featured in publications such as The New Yorker, Harper’s, Words Without Borders, Literary Hub, ArabLit, The Markaz Review, Poetry International, Harper’s and Poetry Magazine. He was a 2024 Jean-Jacques Rousseau fellow at the Akademie Schloss Solitude, Germany.

Wiam El-Tamami is an Egyptian writer, literary translator, and editor whose work has been featured in publications such as The Paris Review, Granta, Ploughshares, Freeman’s, AGNI, Literary Hub, ArabLit, and The Common, as well as various anthologies, including Palestine is Everywhere (2025). She won the 2011 Harvill Secker Translation Prize and was a finalist for the 2023 Disquiet International Prize and the 2024 First Pages Prize. Her work also received a Pushcart Prize nomination in 2024 and was a runner-up for the 2025 Jules Chametzy Prize. She is an editor at large at The Avery Review. https://wiameltamami.com/

Competing Interests

The author and translator have no competing interests to declare.