Wedding in the Time of Genocide
by Khalil Sima'an
— “And we love life, if we find a way to it”, Mahmoud Darwish
We celebrate life whenever we can,
ululate solemn palms for the last doves
the last dawns, the last dusks, sing virgin
songs for unconsumed love, dance as one
a thread of grooms and brides fluttering
like kites over the burnt face of the moon.
Tonight I shall string the hapless stars
on a loose thread in my burning mind,
pinch them like hopeless prayer beads,
pet their virgin glow and gleam goodbye,
lie down on clandestine cyclamens
of white phosphorus and pink gelignite,
celebrate love in every way we can,
and when the weary dawn arrives,
slashed and bruised, bleeding its sunrise,
ululate Mother, sing seagulls and white
spume over the waves, sing Sisters, ululate
the fruits of your wombs, whip the rhythm
of the flutes, ululate and celebrate,
let us scrape the grains of famine this day;
could it have come about any other way?
We celebrate life | the only way | we can.
Inspired by a news item about a wedding in the time of genocide in Gaza, January 2024.
We celebrate life whenever we can,
ululate solemn palms for the last doves
the last dawns, the last dusks, sing virgin
songs for unconsumed love, dance as one
a thread of grooms and brides fluttering
like kites over the burnt face of the moon.
Tonight I shall string the hapless stars
on a loose thread in my burning mind,
pinch them like hopeless prayer beads,
pet their virgin glow and gleam goodbye,
lie down on clandestine cyclamens
of white phosphorus and pink gelignite,
celebrate love in every way we can,
and when the weary dawn arrives,
slashed and bruised, bleeding its sunrise,
ululate Mother, sing seagulls and white
spume over the waves, sing Sisters, ululate
the fruits of your wombs, whip the rhythm
of the flutes, ululate and celebrate,
let us scrape the grains of famine this day;
could it have come about any other way?
We celebrate life | the only way | we can.
Inspired by a news item about a wedding in the time of genocide in Gaza, January 2024.
Khalil Sima’an is a Palestinian poet and academic living in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. His work is nominated for Best of the Net Anthology 2025, and appeared in various poetry journals including ANMLY, Solstice, Clarion, Rising Phoenix and Fikra, and in Arabic language literary magazine Al-Jadeed and daily Al-Ittihad. Khalil works as professor of computational linguistics at the University of Amsterdam.