"The Night Sky" from Everything Sings: Maps for a Narrative Atlas by Denis Wood, 2nd edition, Siglio, 2013, © the author and Siglio.

This night of mine is a black bride from the Zanj wearing necklaces of pearls. – Al-Ma‘arri

The Star of the East sings for the Prophet
while I release my song,
which rises from the deep.
Filthy snow is piled on the sidewalks,
and an elusive star of nativity
keeps leading the magi astray—victims
of their own hearts.

False star of nativity, I don’t want to believe
you’re a star of death.

I release my sighs from the deep
while the Star of the East still lifts
the glory of her voice to the Prophet.

But this night is not my own.
It’s not a black bride from the Zanj wearing necklaces of pearls.
This night of mine is a white bride, dead
and unadorned.

Najwan Darwish
Najwan Darwish is one of the foremost contemporary Arab poets. His second major collection in English translation, Nothing More to Lose and Exhausted on the Cross, translated by Kareem James Abu-Zeid, was published by NYRB Poets in 2021, with a foreword by Raúl Zurita. It was shortlisted for the 2022 PEN Award for Poetry in Translation, the National Translation Award in Poetry, and the Derek Walcott Prize, and won the Sarah Maguire Prize. Darwish lives between Haifa and his birthplace, Jerusalem. His third collection in English, No One Will Know You Tomorrow: Selected Poems, 2014-2024, translated by Kareem James Abu-Zeid, is published by The Margellos World Republic of Letters, Yale University Press, 2024.

Kareem James Abu-Zeid
Kareem James Abu-Zeid is an award-winning translator, editor, writer, and scholar. He has translated numerous writers, namely Najwan Darwish, Rabee Jaber, and Songs of Mihyar the Damascene by Adunis (co-translated with Ivan Eubanks, New Directions, 2019; Penguin Modern Classics, 2021), among others. He is the recipient of awards, fellowships, honors, and residencies from PEN America, the National Endowment for the Arts, Poetry magazine, the Fulbright Program, the Lannan Foundation, and Banff Centre for the Arts. Abu-Zeid lives outside of Santa Fe.
http://www.kareemjamesabuzeid.com