The first poetry reading I organized for Moadon Tzavta, a culture club in Jerusalem, featured Yehuda Amichai and Anton Shammas. In 1977 or ‘78, I was invited by Dan Goldblatt, another American living at the time in Israel, to run a series of poetry readings at the club where he was artistic director. I knew and loved Amichai’s work. From asking around, I learned of Shammas. A Palestinian writer and poet, Shammas had translated Amichai’s work into Arabic. Amichai had translated Shammas’ work into Hebrew. The reading would be an opportunity for an Israeli-Jew and an Arab to read together, both their own work in the original languages as well as each other’s work in translation. Maybe it would also be an opportunity to bring together West (primarily Jewish) and East (primarily Arab) Jerusalem.
Moadon Tzavta was packed for the reading. The energy in the room was electric. Though my conversational Hebrew at the time was passable, I couldn’t read Hebrew poetry. And I didn’t know a word of Arabic. So, my sense of what happened that night was based solely on the audience’s response to Amichai and Shammas. I knew just enough about the history of modern Israel to believe that this event was contributing in a small way to bringing Israelis and Palestinians together.
Today I know a little more about Israel and Palestine. But I don’t want to talk about it. It’s too painful. It’s too complicated. It’s too divisive. But then along comes this:
Fourteen thousand, Fourteen thousand, Fourteen thousand. Not fourteen, not fourteen hundred, fourteen thousand Fourteen thousand soft hands touching right now the gate of Allah. A chain of little angels covering the sky of this life.
These are the opening lines of a poem by Nasser Rabah, translated by Philip Terman. Born in Gaza in 1963, Rabah lives there to this day. He has published five collections of poetry and two novels. With the help of his colleague and friend Saleh Razzouk, a Syrian translator and writer in Aleppo, Terman has been translating some of Rabah’s poems. The poem “14,000,” about Gazan children, was originally posted on Rabah’s Facebook page as “4,000” on December 1, 2023.
The poem continues,
Life looks old without children, Fourteen thousand lost kisses staggering in the air, Fourteen thousand white butterflies without flowers to land on, Fourteen thousand times the word: “Mama” will not be said. Fourteen thousand times the word: “Papa” will shatter the heart each morning and evening, Fourteen thousand colorful shoes tucked under empty beds, Fourteen thousand school bags guarding the sorrow of homes.
I first heard this poem when Terman read it at a translation panel that was part of the most recent annual conference hosted by Yetzirah: A Hearth for Jewish Poetry. Phil (he’s a friend) was a bit concerned about sharing the work of a Palestinian poet at a conference for Jewish poets at this moment. He may have been aware of Yetzirah’s DEI page, “Yetzirah: A Hearth for All Jewish Poets,” where it states that Yetzirah acts “as a nonpolitical space in which Jewish poets of all backgrounds and politics can come together, finding connection in the vitality of poetry.” For me and, I imagine, many other attendees at Phil’s session, it was impossible not to be moved by the poem. Rather than merely offering us news from the front line, the poem brings us the inside story, the story of a shattered heart.
Terman writes extensively about Jewish life, in particular Yiddishkeit-inflected, Ashkenazi Jewish life. One of Terman’s most recent books is The Whole Mishpocha: New and Selected Jewish Poems, 1998-2023. This book includes poems from The Torah Garden, Rabbis of the Air, and other collections. Terman is undeniably a Jewish poet who shares with his readers some of the vitality of Jewish life in his work. So, are his translations of Nasser Rabah and the late Syrian poet Riad al-Saleh al-Hussein (1954-1982) political acts? In “Sing for the Lost Souls,” a 2016 essay on his now long relationship with Saleh Razzouk, who has not only worked with Terman on Terman’s translations from Arabic but who has also translated and published a book of Terman’s work translated into Arabic, Terman writes, “my Jewishness is complicated—loving the scholarship, the rituals, the stories and poetry, the questionings about God and our place in the universe, but dismayed by the extremists, the notion of “chosenness,” the “tribalism” that separates and insulates rather than expands and connects.” Does this suggest that Terman’s interest in the work of Rabah and other Arabic-language poets is at root an understandable human response to divisiveness? Are Terman’s translations the natural response of a strong poet who wants to share vital work of other poets, including Arab and Palestinian poets, with those of us who don’t read Arabic and may not be aware of Rabah and al-Hussein and others who are our neighbors?
In “It’s All Possible,” Terman’s poem dedicated to al-Hussein, Terman writes,
Riad, no one in my country has heard of you. … Can this translation give you back the voice you heeded in your soul’s privacy? You wanted to build a room for a thousand friends.
Did Riad imagine a room full of friends from different cultures, friends with different aesthetics, political views, religious beliefs and practices? Is the room he wanted to build actually a poem? The word “stanza” in Italian means “room” or “stopping place” or “station.” When we enter a poem, we join the poet as well as other readers and listeners who have entered. Is a poem the space where, despite our differences, we can become friends?
In a poem, sometimes the simplest, most direct language is just right to express strong emotion. Here, again, is a line from “14,000”:
“Fourteen thousand colorful shoes tucked under empty beds”
Sometimes a little figurative language surprises a reader and deepens the feeling: “lost kisses staggering in the air.” And immediately following that, “white butterflies without flowers to land on.” In “14,000,” we’ve already had the sky: “A chain of little angels covering the sky of this life.” Now the gaze turns downward to the earth where we find butterflies. Are the butterflies a metaphor for the souls of the 14,000 children? Are they a metaphor for “kisses staggering in the air?” Are they actual butterflies that, in the aftermath of many bombings, could find no flowers left on which to feed? The linescan be read in any of these ways. They are simple and clear and point in several directions at once. The vitality of poetry.
In another couplet from “It’s All Possible,” Terman writes,
Riad, in the original, your words travel from right to left, From your Middle East to my Middle West.
Arabic and Hebrew: both are written from right to left. They travel in unison across the page, heading toward the left margin. English travels from left to right. So, we can say that the languages—Hebrew/Arabic and English—move toward each other. I’m reminded of what Yehuda Halevi, one of the great Hebrew language poets of Muslim Spain, wrote, “[I]n my going / out to meet you, / I found you coming toward me.” Halevi, of course, is writing about God. But if there was ever a time when we need to move toward one another, to listen to each other’s voices, to hear each other’s stories—our joys and griefs—this is the time. And this is the gift Phil Terman’s translations offer us—those of us who can’t read Arabic or Hebrew. Vital poetry. Vital humanity.
If you would like to learn more about Terman’s translations of a few contemporary Arab-language poets, please join us for the next meeting of Yetzirah’s book club: Sunday, Feb. 15, 12:00 p.m. to 1:30 p.m. EST on Zoom. For more information and to register please visit https://yetzirahpoets.org/yprograms/book-club-philip-terman-and-translations-of-the-poetry-of-riad-saleh-hussein-and-nasser-rabah/
Richard Chess has published four books of poetry, the most recent of which is Love Nailed to the Doorpost. Professor emeritus from UNC Asheville, where he directed the Center for Jewish Studies for 30 years, Chess serves on the boards of Yetzirah: A Hearth for Jewish Poetry and Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center, where he co-directs its Faith in Arts project. You can find him at www.richardchess.com .
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