issue 33: winter 2026

NAJWAN DARWISH

Mend this Hope, If You Can: Poetic Discourses

Translated from the Arabic by Kareem James Abu-Zeid

Translators’ note: In these Mukhatabat (Discourses), Najwan Darwish not only diversifies the themes of this classical mystical Arabic genre, but also enacts a radical shift—grounding it entirely in the earthly realm and reconciling the spiritual with the political, as he links the immediacy of the ongoing genocide in Palestine to the tormented and exhausted conscience of the world.

He said to me: Leave it to the liars
to weep over the murdered children
with trite expressions
and lamentations whose scope
we know all too well.
Your reckoning’s more difficult
than lying and weeping.

He said to me: My soul
roams above these mountains, not knowing
whether those it encounters are brothers
or murderers.
These mountains, which the coast has not withheld its water from,
what need have they to be quenched with blood?
Isn't it enough that we’ve become ghosts
roaming the mountains, not knowing
whether those we encounter are murderous brothers
or fraternal murderers?

My soul is roaming, tonight,
above the mountains of the Syrian coast,
roaming and not knowing, still not knowing—
its wounds are too great
for it to ever know.

He said to me: These are the noontimes
of a shattered hope.
Mend it, if you can.

The land is plowed
by the sorrows of the earth
while the sea
keeps spinning in your head.

Najwan Darwish (b. 1978) is one of the foremost contemporary Arab poets. Since the publication of his first collection in 2000, his poetry has been hailed across the Arab world and beyond as a singular expression of the Palestinian struggle. He has published eight books in Arabic, and his work has been translated into more than twenty languages. NYRB Poets published Darwish’s Nothing More to Lose, translated by Kareem James Abu-Zeid, in 2014, which was picked as one of the best books of the year by NPR and nominated for several awards. His second major collection in English, Exhausted on the Cross, was published by NYRB Poets in 2021, with a Foreword by Raúl Zurita, and was awarded the Sarah Maguire Prize. Darwish lives between Haifa and his birthplace, Jerusalem.

Kareem James Abu-Zeid, PhD, is an Egyptian-American translator of poets and novelists from across the Arab world who translates from Arabic, French, and German. He has received the Sarah Maguire Prize for poetry in translation, an NEA translation grant, PEN Center USA's translation prize, Poetry Magazine's translation prize, a Fulbright research fellowship, and residencies from the Lannan Foundation and the Banff International Center for the Arts, among other honors. His book-length translations include work by Najwan Darwish (Palestine), Adonis (Syria), Dunya Mikhail (Iraq), and Rabee Jaber (Lebanon). He is also the author of the book The Poetics of Adonis and Yves Bonnefoy: Poetry as Spiritual Practice. The online hub for his work is www.kareemjamesabuzeid.com