More on: Khaled Mattawa

Sometimes, to comfort myself, I think of myself as a city, not a woman, but a city that can be rebuilt again.

Khaled Mattawa on Adonis Our new issue includes Khaled Mattawa’s translation of “A Bridge to Job” by leading Syrian poet Adonis. We asked Mattawa to talk with us a little about Adonis’s work, the challenges of translation from Arabic, and what poetry in translation can uniquely offer us. This project is supported in part by…

Night girl, your book is full. You have drawn all the pictures. You have seen many weepers. Rainbows held your sky in place, and sorrows bloomed about you like flowers. Moons floated on your lakes and washed them. Stars lit your river beds, and songs adorned your chest with garlands. When a bird sings when…

Long after the sun falls into the sea and twilight slips off the horizon like a velvet sheet and the air gets soaked in blackness, long after clouds hover above like boulders and stars crawl up and fill the sky, long after bodies tangle dance and falter and fatigue blows in and bends them and…