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by Najwan DarwishTranslated from Arabic by Kareem James Abu-Zeid
Nothing but the nightmare bus
passes by our home,
nothing but the whistle of a single train
sounds in our memory—
sometimes it takes our children,
sometimes it brings us colonizers.
Its whistle is the silence of victims,
its smoke is their history.
And in our sea, nothing
but a single ship casts anchor—
it brings colonizers
and escapes with victims.
What we feared came to pass.
What we hoped for never came.