Poem of the Week 416, Ashraf Fayadh, Palestine

What’s your idea about my days that I usually spend without you?
about my words that used rapidly evaporate
and about my heavy pain
about the knots that have sedimented inside my thorax
like dried up algae.
I forgot to tell you…that in the practical sense of the word
I’ve grown used to your absence
and that my wishes have lost their way to your desires
and my memory has begun to corrode!
And that I still chase light, not because I want to see; the dark always frightens
even when we are used to it!

ASHRAF FAYADH, PALESTINA
Translation Fady Joudah
Painting: detail, work by Akbar Behkalam, Iran 1944-

Poem publihsed by: “Instructions Within”, Beirut, Al-Farabi, 2008

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Ashraf Fayadh is a 35-year-old artist and poet of Palestinian origin who lives in Saudi Arabia. He has been active in the art scene in Saudi Arabia and even exhibited at the Biennale of Venice. He has been sentenced to death for apostasy last November.