Translated from the Arabic by Robin Moger
We grow old
The way of houses.
At first, in the face, a small line
Which no one reads as lines. With time,
Cracks building.
Fearfully and rapidly the names
Gather their possessions from our heads and leave
A terrible void behind them.
Small rodents make the nests
They only leave when hungry
To gnaw at something in our chests.
They make a rustling and a scraping,
Intensifying with every breath.
We grow old
The way of houses.
In the end
Everyone can see we’re falling down.
You tell it in their hurrying, by
Their glance foreseeing ruin.
Soukaina Habiballah is a Moroccan poet, novelist, and screenwriter, who has published four poetry collections, two novels, and one short story collection. She has received a number of awards including the 2015 Buland Al Haidari Prize, a Maydan Floating Voices Award, and the Nadine Shames Prize for Arab Screenwriter for her short film Who Left the Door Open?. She was a resident at the International Writing Program in Iowa in 2019.
Robin Moger is a translator of Arabic to English based in Cape Town, South Africa. His translations of prose and poetry appear in Blackbox Manifold, the White Review, Tentacular, Seedings, the Johannesburg Review of Books, Washington Square Review, and others. He has translated several novels and prose works into English including Haytham El Wardany’s The Book of Sleep (Seagull Press), Mohamed Kheir’s Slipping (Two Lines Press), and The Crocodiles (Seven Stories) by Youssef Rakha.
