Sketch Me a Happy Palestine

Sketch me a Palestine
with children chasing a ball
in a vacant lot

Sketch me a Palestine that looks like us
with happy shouts that rise to the sky
but never reach for the moon
or the stars when they disagree with us

Sketch me a Palestine 
and a garden full of fidgety kids

Sketch with your mind and with your fists

Sketch and do nothing else
from morning till night

* * *

Sketch on trees
and on bubbling silence

Sketch on the underside of waves
and on the secret heart of stones

Sketch on the foreheads of dear ones
whom our eyes will never see again

Sketch a Palestine that ambles by
like a tranquil crowd

* * *

Sketch men and women
intent on reinventing a carefree horizon 
at the end of the day

Take what I don’t have
it’s all yours
and sketch a happy Palestine

Sketch with our dreams
and our wounds

Sit down there
under a tree
and sketch

* * *

Remember our mother

When there was nothing to eat
she said
sleep my little one

Remember her face
and her eyes as green
as the clearest waters

She said
sleep my little one
eyes closed we crossed the sky
like a field of wheat

* * *

Remember our mother and sketch me happiness
with your soul and with your fists

I am too weak to hold a pencil
and the world cannot be without you

Look at these children
without whom the world cannot be the world

Imagine them carefree
and playing ball like other kids
in a vacant lot

* * *

Forget what you are seeing
and sketch with your rage and mine

Sketch with your fury and my nights

Sketch me a Palestine
with farmers in the fields
and people jostling in buses
during rush hour

Sketch me a Palestine unafraid
at dusk

* * *

A Palestine with its Champs-Élysées
if people feel like shopping
and a Statue of Liberty containing multitudes
near Ellis Island

Sketch a Palestine with grumpy old men
and brazen children

Sketch a Palestine with every right to exist
for all those filled with irrepressible élan

Every human being is the world’s desire
and no one is less than his neighbor

* * *

All human beings deserve a horizon 
said our mother

Remember the horizon she drew in our garden

We had neither home nor garden
but our mother had colored pencils
and created a horizon just for us

All human beings she said
deserve to cultivate a dawn
a night 
a sky
to do with as they please 

* * *

Remember who and what we are
and sketch me 
a Palestine
tearless 
unscathed 

Sketch me a happy Palestine

Sketch me a Palestine 
free to laugh every minute of the day

* * *

A Palestine returning home late at night
in time to go to bed

Sceaux, September 24, 2024

Translation from the French