Spring 2022 | Kareem James Abu-Zeid Reads Their Translation of "Night Song" by Najwan Darwish – MQR Sound
Kareem James Abu-Zeid reads their translation of "Night Song" by Najwan Darwish from MQR's Spring 2022 issue.
The drunks are the only ones
singing in the streets
beneath the windows of the night readers.
Lord, why didn’t you make me a drunkard
to sing beneath the people’s windows?
Lord, why did you create me from a nation
that pours itself out
like a river of tears
whenever it gets drunk?
They alone keep vigil in the rooms of night
with the poems of their ancestors
(that’s how they set up roadblocks
to keep death at bay).
They alone wake up
after the sun has shed the noontime
over the terracotta mountain:
the earth’s still there
and the city’s a guitar
the people pluck with their feet.
Translated from the Arabic by
Kareem James Abu-Zeid
For more from the Spring 2022 special issue of MQR, “Decades of Fire: New Writing from the Middle East and North Africa,” you can purchase the issue here.
