You Can Be the Last Leaf: Selected Poems

by Maya Abu Al-Hayyat, Fady Joudah (Translator)

Translated from the Arabic and introduced by Fady Joudah, You Can Be the Last Leaf draws on two decades of work to present the transcendent and timely US debut of Palestinian poet Maya Abu Al-Hayyat.

Art. Garlic. Taxis. Sleepy soldiers at checkpoints. The smell of trash on a winter street, before "our wild rosebush, neglected / by the gate, / blooms." Lovers who don't return, the possibility that you yourself might not return. Making beds. Cleaning up vomit. Reading recipes. In You Can Be the Last Leaf, these are the ordinary and profound—sometimes tragic, sometimes dreamy, sometimes almost frivolous—moments of life under Israeli occupation.

Here, private and public domains are inseparable. Desire, loss, and violence permeate the walls of the home, the borders of the mind. And yet that mind is full of its own fierce and funny voice, its own preoccupations and strangenesses. "It matters to me," writes Abu Al-Hayyat, "what you're thinking now / as you coerce your kids to sleep / in the middle of shelling" whether it's coming up with "plans / to solve the world's problems," plans that "eliminate longing from stories, remove exhaustion from groans," or dreaming "of a war / that's got no war in it," or proclaiming that "I don't believe in survival."

In You Can Be the Last Leaf, Abu Al-Hayyat has created a richly textured portrait of Palestinian interiority—at once wry and romantic, worried and tenacious, and always singing itself.

Genres: Poetry, Fiction, Middle East, Politics, World Literature, The World

85 pages, Kindle Edition

First published May 10, 2022

About the author

Maya Abu Al-Hayyat is a Beirut-born, Palestinian novelist and poet living in Jerusalem.

Abu Al-Hayyat is the author of four collections of poems, including You Can Be the Last Leaf (Milkweed, 2022), translated by Fady Joudah; four novels, including the latest, No One Knows His Blood Type (Dar Al-Adab, 2013); and numerous children’s stories, including The Blue Pool of Questions (Penny Candy Books, LLC, 2017). Her work has appeared in A Bird Is Not a Stone: An Anthology of Contemporary Palestinian Poetry (Freight Books, 2014). She is also the editor of The Book of Ramallah: A City in Short Fiction (Comma Press, 2021).

Abu Al-Hayyat is the director of Palestine Writing Workshop, an institution that seeks to encourage reading in Palestinian communities through creative writing projects and storytelling with children and teachers.

Reviews

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is Fady Joudah's translation of verses selected from several works by Maya Abu Al-Hayyat, and published by Milkweed Editions. Politically, this is an attractive collection. Abu Al-Hayyat was born in Beirut and resides now in Jerusalem. The poems give voice to Palestinians living amidst the daily threat of violence. In terms of style and structure, these didn't stand out as particularly memorable or out of the ordinary. It is a necessary collection in terms of translation, but not one I'm likely to return to as a reader.

[Sadie Hartmann · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is my favorite poetry collection I've ever read.
Thoughts on motherhood
Grief
Hope
Love
War
Children
Anxieties--this poet and I share a lot of the same anxieties but she suffers from anxieties that I will never know. It feels so intimate to share in someone's worries and heartbreak...to just let the empathy and sadness be enough
I'm thankful to Maya abu Al-Hayyat for this collection. I enjoyed it so much. Her whole heart laid bare.

[Carey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Actual Rating: 4.5/5

I really loved this poetry collection; there were so many favorites in here. The author explores themes of loss, displacement, apartheid, depression, ptsd, womanhood, motherhood, and honestly much more within this collection. It's split into four sections and while I absolutely loved the first three sections and felt that the poems built off of one another and made the organization and structure cohesive, the same couldn't be said for the final section. I felt a bit frustrated in the end because there are very few poems in this section and they felt awkwardly placed. Additionally, these were poems where perhaps the translations were not as authentic because many of them left me confused as to what was happening, or what was I supposed to be taking away from them. This last section left me pretty confused how to rate this because the majority of this collection was truly amazing and deeply resonated with me whether that be for offering relatable reflections, or much-needed perspectives of important experiences. Regardless, it's still one I would highly recommend to others. Yet, for me personally the end of this collection felt a bit like a plot twist!

[Bogi Takács]

One of my most anticipated 2022 poetry releases... or just book releases altogether; and it was amazing. I've read some of Maya Abu Al-Hayyat's individual poems in various venues, and also really liked Book of Ramallah which she edited, and it was WONDERFUL to see more of her oeuvre.

The gentle surrealism, the patient humor, the way she approaches absolutely heart-and mind-wrecking topics and keeps those aspects without toning them down and also without giving an inch to voyeurism. Also such an emotional range to this work while it remains strongly cohesive; and so many striking glimpses of the world; of being a mother, parent, spouse, widow; of the wonder and the irony in the everyday.

I really liked that the poems were selected from different collections and I thought it was interesting to sort them in reverse chronological order. Fady Joudah's translations are always great and this volume was no exception either; I also thought his foreword matched the tone of the book and helped contextualize the poems.

Please don't miss out on this collection and now I would really like a complete collected works in English... (of course, she continues to write, so with more and more volumes added...!)

_____
Source of the book: Bought with graduation gift card from Kathryn S. (Thank you!!)

[Stacia · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a collection drawn from four of Maya Abu Al-Hayyat's works with the poems printed in reverse order of publication (2021, 2016, 2012, 2006). The newer ones feel more grounded while the older ones feel more dream-like -- reflective of the aging process, I think, the dreamier verses from longer ago, the more grounded from more recently. A slightly different perspective borne of more time, more experience, more life in general. Many of the poems feel universal whether examining the mundane or the extraordinary & then you are reminded of living a life under occupation, a place where you try to get children to sleep while shelling is going on or you get a gun pointed in your face at a checkpoint. Wedding Anniversary made me chuckle & I Don't Ask Anymore was one of my favorites. There is humor & there is heartbreak with humanity firmly at the center of each piece. I don't always like poetry but this is quite a wonderful collection. Recommended.

[Lauren · Rating 5 out of 5]

DAY 7 of The Sealey Challenge

You Can be the Last Leaf by Maya Abu Al-Hayyat translated from Arabic by Fady Joudah - Palestine

° Poetry Themes: Palestinian struggle, daily life, sexuality, motherhood
5 ⭐

[Cynthia Wu · Rating 5 out of 5]

You Can Be the Last Leaf is a breathtaking, elegant, and poignant collection of poems about love, war, and self-discovery from the Palestinian poet Maya Abu Al-Hayyat. Unlike other popular, modern poems where it seems like the author took a pretty sentence and hit the key “Enter” a lot of times, what the author writes gives justice to the word Poetry. The author knew what she is doing. She weaves artistic words together to create beautiful, touching moments for the readers to immerse in. The amount of feelings this collection of poems show is incredible. We can feel her despair, her hope, and her fear vividly through her writing. Some of her writing hurts to read because you can feel how much she has gone through as someone who has experienced the horrific effects of war. She is indeed a powerful poet.

Maya Abu Al-Hayyat's words are filled with pain, she says: “Every time I leave the house / it’s suicide / And each return, a failed attempt” She writes about massacres, mothers with dead desires, and the children who don’t return.

However, the author Maya is also an optimistic dreamer. She mentions: “At night in bed / I dream of a war / that’s got no war in it.” No matter how much she has been through, how exhausted she is, and even losing her beloved in the second intifada in 2000. She is still very attentive to her surroundings and writes out beautiful phrases such as “I run away from sunglassed martyrs / in posters on city walls / to the happy endings in children’s stories.” She also dreams about: “Stuffing our pockets with seashells and madness / and building a city” She chooses to live on with hope and examines life’s beauty again.

Her bold statements about what is the definition of death, and what is the definition of living resonate with me deeply. She is brave enough to say: “If we live, we live lightly/and if we die/we die shyly.” She then categorizes herself as: “I’m almost died, almost alive”

She depicts her change and the effect of the first and second intifada on her. She says: “I don’t ask anymore/about your land or religion/maybe I care/how you were tortured /in the first or second intifada/and other wars.” From her poems, we can sense how the war has reshaped her into a completely new person.

Reading You Can Be the Last Leaf has been such a heart-touching journey that I have truly enjoyed. This translated English version of the book by the translator Fady Joudah is breathtaking. This book now sits in a collection of my favorite poetry books. These poems about war, love, and life are as gripping as they are moving.

[Rose · Rating 5 out of 5]

LOVED THIS. Her style of poetry is absolutely beautiful, and I love how the poems from each book almost weave into one another. She’s grown so much as a poet, which is evident when reading the first section vs the last. Will definitely be looking into picking up some of her other poetry books!

[Lea · Rating 4 out of 5]

Love, motherhood, war - check points. These are repeated themes throughout the collection. So many beautiful and profound poems and imagery.
I found myself wondering what might have been lost in translation, with a male translator.

[lil · Rating 4 out of 5]

wowowow
poems from “the book of fear” were my fav

[Francisca Viegas · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Those who win by killing fewer children
are losers.”

She poured out her heart in this collection.

[غبار · Rating 4 out of 5]

stark, oracular & irreverent in the rhythms of its dailiness, its shattering of myth: "Each time an opportunity arises for me to not believe in one thing / or another I smile from ear to ear / to let all this freedom in." have been eagerly awaiting this collection – which ranges across maya abu al-hayyat's oeuvre in reverse chronological order from 2021 to 2006 – since last year, when i first found out about her work in asymptote's winter 2020 issue. 'similarities' was my favourite poem out of the six featured there, & definitely is still a highlight of this volume; to me it carries a voice that emerges from fragments of pain and brokenness: it bespeaks the failures of language as spectacle, the way one people’s trauma mutates into the reason for another’s oppression, the irreparable violations of such ideals as ‘justice’ and the necessity, in spite of it all, for us to listen to its continued demands. i wish more pieces had been chosen from her earliest collection, what she spoke of him. her voice there, which appears more invested in creating enigmatic third-person personas ("a contemporary novel", "about him", "the upcoming dervish dance"), really intrigues me & feels somehow divergent – in the way it angles itself before the mirror of meaning – from what she later went on to write.

[Andrea · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am therefore
they point their rifles at me.

Palestinian poet Maya abu Al-Hayyat talks, indeed, about Palestine; about fear and war and soldiers and corpses, and she does it so vividly I cringed and suffered and could not say the words out loud. She also talks a lot about motherhood ("oh mothers / who send winter clothes one size too big / to their incarcerated sons"), love and death, and even a little bit about pleasure. This poetry collection was raw and powerful, and, non-witshstanding some parts that were too 'contemporary' or abstract for my tastes (there's always some of those...), I really enjoyed it and will be looking into more work from her.

Especial mention to the translator, Fady Joudah, who did a wonderful job and transmitted incredibly beautiful sonority for English audiences:

That's how myths are made:
erosion, corrosion,
drop by drop,
doggedly, bitterly,
they draw memory out.

Overall, 3.5/5, but I really do recommend it even to the poetry sceptics!

[Sonja · Rating 5 out of 5]

A Palestinian woman wrote these poems making me acutely aware of the violence around us and the death culture we live in. Thank you Mayaa Abau Al-Ohayaat and Fadi Joudah (translator)

You Can’t
They will fall in the end,
those who say you can’t.
It’ll be age or boredom
that overtakes them,
or lack of imagination.
Sooner or later,
all leaves fall
to the ground.
You can be the last leaf.
You can convince the
universe
that you pose no threat
to the tree’s life.

[Lizzie · Rating 5 out of 5]

This collection was interesting in its abstract representations of complex ideas such as identity, love, family, life under occupation, and much more. The prose was really beautiful, and I wish I could read Arabic to appreciate the fullness of Abu Al-Hayyat’s words. Poetry is hard for me to discuss, but I’m very glad I read this.

[Becky · Rating 3 out of 5]

Only the rare poem in this collection caught my attention, however I wonder what impact the fact of the translation has there.

[Andrew · Rating 5 out of 5]

Some of the most moving poetry I've read on grief, loss, even the daily labors/minutiae of parenting. Fady Joudah's translations are wonderful, as usual.

[Emma · Rating 4 out of 5]

"I must revise my work with the past,/ my many loves/ who died and still possess their corpses,/but also those who died/without declarable bodies."

[BagelBitch 69 · Rating 4 out of 5]

some really high points in here! not sure i fully understood all of the poems this pass, will have to revisit. very interesting to read alongside ilya kaminsky's "deaf republic"; kaminsky talks about occupation theoretically, but al-hayat writes her lived experience with occupation, and the difference is clear.

[Derek Emerson · Rating 5 out of 5]

An incredible collection that is both accessible and challenging.

[Zach Linge · Rating 5 out of 5]

It’s a testament both to Joudah’s translation skills and to the incredible work of author al-Hayyat that these poems are consistently surprising, complex, and deeply, deeply moving. Also, they operate in so many different registers—at times literal to the point of approaching particularization, and other times so imaginative that the fact that they communicate a concept/premise as clearly as they do is surprising. Take, for example, these two parts of the poem “A Road for Loss”: “Do you know a road for loss / that doesn’t end / in a settlement?” & “I don’t dare to speak. / Whatever I speak of happens.” Or the beginning and end of “Fear”: “I am therefore / they point their rifles at me. / Out of their fingertips I come gushing.” & “As long as you stare into my eyes, I shall remain. / As long as you are another. / As long as you are eternal.” Incredible poetry of witness and experience. I read and reread this book.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this poetry collection on Everand.
The poems have a theme of motherhood,
love, loss, grief, war and checkpoints.
Every time I pick up a Palestinian poetry
collection it is very clear that art is a form
of resistance and a form of coping.
Some of the poems are very moving and
others I struggled with but I am curious
how much is lost within the translation
itself. Emotion is so much of poetry but
words in some languages do not always
translate well and so I think part of it is that. The poem- “Mahmoud” is one that
I think everyone should read. As a mom
I felt that one to my core and cried.

[Noor · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow! I attended a poetry reading by Maya last week, and it was BEAUTIFUL. Definitely a highlight of this semester! Her poetry talks about loss, love, occupation of mind/body/soul, motherhood, desire, grief, and more. I don't think you can encapsulate her poetry in one sentence.

I read this last night at the fountains, and I don't know if I got chills because of the (freezing!!!) cold or because of how good her writing was. Can't wait to read her future works! I'm also looking forward to reading the original Arabic text, because it was so beautiful hearing it at the reading.

[Shaimaa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Achingly beautiful. Outstanding translation.

"We

Yes, we
who raise our flags on every occasion,
mention Palestine twenty times in a sentence,
afraid to laugh for too long,
guilty over our fleeting small joys,
we the pursued
over our identities,
our places of birth,
and especially our burial lots,
we, kind and wicked,
heroic and obstinate,
the first to die and, if necessary, the last,
we nationalists, sentimentalists, tearful,
always tearful
over children we don’t know
who pass by us
with or without sending smiles our way,
their many questions and infuriating habits."

[Tim Nistler · Rating 5 out of 5]

An amazing collection of poems by Maya Abu Al-Hayyat. Beautiful, tragic, heartbreaking, loving. I think Part III was the section that affected me the most. Specifically the poem titled “Mahmoud”. I knew where it was going and still couldn’t stop reading it. And then read it again. “We Could Die in a Traffic Accident” was another. There are poems in here that I can’t even begin to understand or relate to and that is fine. Someone else will relate to or understand them. They will resonate as others did for me.

[Kenia · Rating 4 out of 5]

""Are we human?"
the book's yellow cover asks.
We live in what others have designed and dreamt.
We live in what the wind has done to a tree
thousand of years ago...
we roam the streets of engineers and the debris
of sharp axes in drawings
of ancient municipalities
inside the head of a hasty old man.
Our words about the free soul,
beliefs, and the innocent
land are part of the design.
A screw in the mind of the rocking chair
that grants the universe a burst of passion."

[Luis Rodriguez · Rating 5 out of 5]

Maya's poetry is honestly incredible. This book at this historical moment and the need to mobilize took me without defenses. Each poem is like receiving the gentlest and most lethal jab to the stomach, a smile that sums up the pain and dedication of a people. I hope in the future to get more translations of her work or, failing that, learn to read Arabic, because Maya's work is impressive. It has generated a profound change in my perception towards poetry.

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

THIS POEM!!!:

Your Laughter
The day you explain your laugh to anyone
should never come. Your laugh would lose
its prestige. Laughter
is the excess knowledge no one takes seriously.
And if someone deplores your peals,
pity them, wish them well
and go after your chuckles
full throttle.

I'm in love!!!

[Lauren · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sooner or later, all leaves fall to the ground. /
You can be the last leaf. /
You can convince the universe /
that you pose no threat /
to the tree's life.

Some excellent lines in this collection.

[Amie Whittemore · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really interesting poems. It's always nice to see a selected works collection, to see how voice and subject matter shift across time. Al-Hayyat's poems deal with violence and domesticity and a kind of existential wondering with clarity and precision. No fat on these poems. Definitely worth a read.