Conversation
He who fights monsters should see to it that, in the process, he does not become a monster.
— Nietzsche
Open Letter To Israel
By Yahia Lababidi
Tell me, what steel entered your heart,
what fear made you rabid,
what hate drove out pity?
How could you forget
that how we fight a battle
determines who we become.
When did you grow reckless
with the state of your soul?
We are responsible for our enemy.
Compassion is to consider the role
that we play in their creation.
If you prick us, do we not bleed?
If you poison us, do we not die?
And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?
Strange, how one hate enables another;
how they are like unconscious allies,
darkly united in blocking out the Light.
Yes, we can lend ideas our breath, but ideals —
Peace, Justice, Freedom — require our entire lives,
and, all who are tormented by such ideals
must learn to make an ally of humility.
Truth and conscience can be like large, bothersome flies —
brush them away and they return, buzzing louder:
30,000 souls lost, 2/3 of whom are women & children …
these are unbearable casualties to ignore.
To speak nothing of the intangible casualties:
damage done to our collective psyche, trust, and sleep.
No more nightmares. Please, give us back our dreams.
We can still begin, again, and must.
Wisdom is a return to innocence.
* * *
I do not love you right now
By Olga Stein
I do not love you right now,
though one day I may.
Right now, I do not love the you with angry eyes,
intense and beautiful.
(Pardon me, for the unintended exoticizing;
and for nearly writing exorcizing, by mistake.)
I see you standing across the street
beneath the arched doorway with colourful stones,
announcing the gateway to a home.
You remind me of a panther, with eyes that watch,
wait for me to lower my guard,
so you can spring and tear me to shreds.
I do not love this you.
You do not acknowledge the beauty in me/us.
One day, when you begin to love me back —
when you smile and call me sis or aunt or your Rita —
then I will love and honour you
perhaps more than myself.
* * *
For Israel, Palestine & the Human Family
By Yahia Lababidi
To regain our innocence, we must surrender
our cherished degree in demonology
renounce all intimate familiarity
with those wily spirits of destruction.
In our defense against the howling
seductive entreaties of the night
we might clutch childhood’s mascots,
fiercely against our trembling chest.
10/08/2023
What to say, first
By Yahia Lababidi
say silence
say longing
say awe
say spirit
say light
say pity
say humanity
say humility
say helpless
say ignorance
say patience
say repentance
say sacrifice
say forgiveness
say mercy
say obedience
say grace
say peace
say atone
say work
say charity
say hope
say praise
say belief
say faith
say devotion
say love
say surrender
say rebirth
say trust
say holy
say miracle
say amen
before you can
say religion
or utter the word:
G_d.
10/17/2023
* * *
Title: Moses ben Maimon and Ibn Rushd
By Olga Stein
Let’s imagine that we are Maimonides and Averroes,
(may their legacies endure through the ages).
Somewhere in Andalusia, the scent of Dama de noche
drifts in through high, arched windows.
On a divan side by side,
we recline like intimates,
drinking sharbat in the flickering, dulcet dusk.
Our cups, perched on two octangular tables
inlaid with sparkling taluses,
we converse in Arabic, the tongue of sages,
finding such harmony and accord!
First, we discourse on the art of healing,
agreeing that every instance of creation,
is the sacred handiwork of the Lord,
accordingly, deserving life-saving ministration.
Likewise with laws, derived from a hallowed scroll.
Eye to eye, in the glimmer of light granted us all,
we see that reason bends laws to reasonable ends.
Hence, to forfend blindness to Truth that transcends
narrow self-regard, perverse, cruel inhumanity,
we say in unison, let cogitation, charity, and empathy
be our guide, when jurisprudence is being shaped,
since — in sooth — each nation claims to abide
by commands the One lent all humanity,
while hoarding, with the other hand,
bards and their prophesy.
Night upon us now, candlelight fading,
in hushed tones and consonant notes,
on sublime sublimity we touch,
concurring that each of us can latch
onto a luminous fragment of the Most High,
by contemplating infinite time and space,
the shimmering heavens, the human race.
Such paragons of creation all espy.
Each is a sign and wondrous spark
of the fathomless Allah-Elohim above,
who lights our way out of the dark.
We say, Adorn His work with all-embracing love!
* * *
Resume
By Yahia Lababidi
No matter how exalted your mission statement
Servant of an Inscrutable God,
Restorer of historical injustice
Protector of a Chosen People,
Champion of Existence’s underdogs
there are two small words that will spoil
the most aspirational resume
and forever tarnish your reputation
Those damning words are: child-killer.
10/13/2023
Eros & Thanatos
Yahia Lababidi
We live, love and create
as best as we can
but, sometimes, in haste
— lest we succumb
to the siren call
of self-destruction.
Walls
by Yahia Lababidi
Walls cannot contain
the human spirit —
they cannot hold back love
or keep out hate…
Humanity exists on either end
and it’s a violence
against the human family
to pick a side
Those who build walls
and condone them
do not understand
the limitless heart.
10/10/2023
* * *
Department of Lives Lost
By Olga Stein
Here, at the department of lives lost —
of young lives especially, those of children and youths —
we don’t discriminate. We inventory all,
meticulously counting each soul,
each sapling or flower shockingly torn
from the earthly realm and all that was cherished and close.
In this place, we do our work in the exact same way.
It matters not to us what they wore on their heads,
or how they covered their bodies when alive.
Here, we treat the taking of each single life as theft,
a wicked transgression of a sacrosanct right
to love, beauty, tears, laughter, maturity, and more.
We make a record of every precious lost one.
But make no mistake: we don’t welcome
their arrival, since each is a life extinguished.
Down below is the rightful place for the young,
where each was planted, a seedling
willed to birth in familial soil.
Against those who rip them out without qualms,
we scream in outrage, A pox on both your houses!
Return to Journal
Yahia Lababidi is the author of 12 books of poetry and prose. Lababidi’s forthcoming book is Palestine Wail (2024) a collection of poems dedicated to the ongoing genocide of Palestinians. As a way of coping with the carnage since the dreadful October 7th, Lababidi regularly posts short video readings — political, literary and spiritual — on his YouTube channel.
Lababidi’s recent works include a book of his meditative aphorisms, Quarantine Notes (2023); a love letter to the deserts of Egypt, Desert Songs (2022); and spiritual reflections, Learning to Pray (2021).
Olga Stein holds a PhD in English, and is a university and college instructor. She has taught writing, communications, modern and contemporary Canadian and American literature. Her research focuses on the sociology of literary prizes. A manuscript of her book, The Scotiabank Giller Prize: How Canadian is now with Wilfrid Laurier University Press. Stein is working on her next book, tentatively titled, Wordly Fiction: Literary Transnationalism in Canada. Before embarking on a PhD, Stein served as the chief editor of the literary review magazine, Books in Canada, and from 2001 to 2008 managed the amazon.com-Books in Canada First Novel Award (now administered by Walrus magazine). Stein herself contributed some 150 reviews, 60 editorials, and numerous author interviews to Books in Canada (the online version is available at http://www.booksincanada.com). A literary editor and academic, Stein has relationships with writers and scholars from diverse communities across Canada, as well as in the US. Stein is interested in World Literature, and authors who address the concerns that are now central to this literary category: the plight of migrants, exiles, and the displaced, and the ‘unbelonging’ of Indigenous peoples and immigrants. More specifically, Stein is interested in literary dissidents, and the voices of dissent, those who challenge the current political, social, and economic status quo. Stein is the editor of the memoir, Playing Under The Gun: An Athlete’s Tale of Survival in 1970s Chile by Hernán E. Humaña.
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