Translated from the Arabic by Robin Moger
Every day,
Every day,
Every night,
Experience notwithstanding,
We enter sleep—not knowing
Through which door—each time
Like for the first time.
Not an owl on a branch,
Not one eye open, one eye closed,
Like a dolphin,
Not standing on one leg like a flamingo,
Not in a cave like a bat,
Head hung down, but
Laid out in a bed,
The pillows streaming from our heads.
The only creatures in this world
To take the shot this way:
This nightly fall to ground to lie
Aswim in dreams.
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.
