My earth which is mine will always make more of itself

    The New Jerusalem will be no consolation for the one we lost. 
    —Etel Adnan

 

     I float to the end of paradise. 

     Wail, huile, seaside afterlife.

     Even silence says Palestine.

             Paradise is no consolation

             for the one we lost.

     Find me a breeze to carry a name. 

     A bus ticket to cruise a free coast 
                                                                   through sky center cerulean. 

             Long bereave lady fortune on whose dime none survived. 

             Leaf by leaf, alive. Carriage for the hallowed sky. Upright in song.

     No tree of mine but earth. 

     No mind for none but movement.

            Rush to arrive at the end of longing where meets us all 

            remembrance. Shake down this future from my limb.

                                                I carry finite harvest.

                                                For you who weave me.

                                                I seed and seed.

Credit

Copyright © 2026 by Kamelya Omayma Youssef. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on June 17, 2026, by the Academy of American Poets.

About this Poem

“I write this, reader, amidst the ongoing crisis. I saw the destruction, reader, and felt a deep unshakeable faith. The earth will wait for her rightful inhabitants, who are the ones who provide her with care. This poem came after I saw L’Olivier by Etel Adnan which I thought was a painting then realized was a weaving. Suddenly, I felt the distance between object and origin. I saw the city, the tree, the painting, the painter, the weaver, the border, the worker, the workers, the occupation, the needle, the bomb, the blood, the machine, the dye, the distance, the thread. I felt my late grandmother taking the bus from Sur [Tyre] to Jerusalem to go shopping with her friends. I felt the inevitability of truth, and the inevitability of return.”
—Kamelya Omayma Youssef