A Patch of Gray
How long will we walk with the stars in the dead of night? – Al-Mutanabbi
This light gray in the clouds
and Shakespeare’s green summer—
in a little while a blade from the play
will come down on you.
Don’t trust a stone from the sonnets,
and don’t believe you’re coming home from school in the eighties.
You’ve started getting used to it,
the new rhythm of your name.
You look at the sky: a dark patch of gray.
You look at the earth: a perilous piece of steel.
And you say: How long, how long without the stars?
How long, how long without us?
A patch of gray,
light gray in the clouds.
–Najwan Darwish, translated by Kareem James Abu-Zeid
Najwan Darwish is a poet from Jerusalem, Palestine. He has published nine poetry books in Arabic and his work has been translated into over twenty languages. New York Review Books, which published the English translation of his books Nothing More to Lose (NYRB Poets, 2014) and Exhausted on the Cross (NYRB Poets, 2021) describes him as, “one of the foremost Arabic-language poets”. He has received several awards, most recently The Sarah Maguire Prize (UK, 2022), the Cilento International Poetry Prize (Italy, 2023), and Le Grand prix de Poésie étrangère (France, 2024). Najwan Darwish co-founded and directed several cultural and artistic projects throughout the Arab world and served as an advisor to several Palestinian and Arab cultural initiatives and literary Festivals. He has held several key positions in cultural journalism and has been the Chief Cultural Editor of the Arabic-language London-based newspaper Al Araby Al Jadeed since 2014.
Kareem James Abu-Zeid, PhD, is an award-winning translator of poets and novelists from across the Arab world. He has received the Sarah Maguire Prize, PEN Center USA's translation prize, Poetry Magazine's translation prize, a Fulbright Fellowship, and an NEA translation grant, and has thrice been a finalist for the PEN America Translation Prize. His translation of Najwan Darwish’s No One Will Know You Tomorrow: Selected Poems 2014 – 2024 (Yale Margellos, 2024) is currently a finalist for the 2025 PEN America Translation Prize in Poetry. He is also the author of the book The Poetics of Adonis and Yves Bonnefoy: Poetry as Spiritual Practice.