Dor
We walk through clouds wrapped in ancient symbols We descend the hill wearing water Maybe we are dead and don’t know it Maybe we are violet flowers and those we long for love only our unmade hearts On attend, on attend Wait for Duras and Eminescu to tell us in French then Romanian light has wounds slow down— memory is misgivings Wait until the nails get rusty in the houses of our past.
Copyright © 2019 by Nathalie Handal. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on April 3, 2019, by the Academy of American Poets.
“Growing up, I was a constant passenger in someone’s landscape. Maybe these landscapes were mine too, but I was never certain. There was always someone or something that made me question my part in it. For refugees, migrants, exiles, and internally displaced peoples, home often becomes what’s lost—what undid, tormented, or saved us. One afternoon, my Swiss Romanian friend and novelist Raluca Antonescu and I were lost in the streets of our minds. She suddenly said, 'In Romanian, we have the word Dor. It means the longing felt when you miss someone—or somewhere—you love.' This is what keeps me hopeful, how we can belong to a three-letter word in a foreign language."
—Nathalie Handal
Nathalie Handal
Nathalie Handal is the author of several books of poetry, including Life in a Country Album (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2019) and The Republics (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2015), which received a 2016 Arab American Book Award