Not Just Passing

Yesterday, a star said
to the little light in my heart,
We are not just transients
passing.

Do not die. Beneath this glow
some wanderers go on
walking.

You were first created out of love,
so carry nothing but love
to those who are trembling.

One day, all gardens sprouted
from our names, from what remained
of hearts yearning.

And since it came of age, this ancient language
has taught us how to heal others
with our longing,

how to be a heavenly scent
to relax their tightening lungs: a welcome sigh,
a gasp of oxygen.

Softly, we pass over wounds,
like purposeful gauze, a hint of relief,
an aspirin.

O little light in me, don’t die,
even if all the galaxies of the world
close in.

O little light in me, say:
Enter my heart in peace.
All of you, come in!

Translated by Huda Fakhreddine,¹

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¹ Huda Fakhreddine is a writer, translator, and Associate Professor of Arabic Literature at the University
of Pennsylvania. She is the author of Metapoesis in the Arabic Tradition (Brill) and The Arabic
Prose Poem: Poetic Theory and Practice (Edinburgh University Press), and the co-editor of The
Routledge Handbook of Arabic Poetry (Routledge). She is also the author of a book of creative
nonfiction, Zaman saghīr taḥt shams thāniya (A Brief Time Under a Different Sun), and Wa min
thamma al-ālam (And Then the World). She is co-editor of Middle Eastern Literatures and an
editor of the Library of Arabic Literature.