Hooligans & pirates tighten
the circle of hell around us

God has nothing to do with it


Ah to escape to the realm of myths
& legends       Haifa won’t be
Grenada & we won’t give you
this gift of jumping off
the cliff into a sea of fire*

our crystal cry in the face of the sun


so much pain           the heart contains
so long                      this night of long knives
& so slow                  this dawn to rise



*In Sauteurs, a fishing village overlooking its eponymous bay at the extreme north of the island of Grenada in the Caribbean, around forty Indigenous people threatened by French colonization jumped with their families from a 40-meter-high cliff. Derek Walcott relates this episode in his biography in verse, Another Life, by evoking the “crystal cry” let out at the moment of jumping off the cliff.

From Chaos, Crossing by Olivia Elias, translated by Kareem James Abu-Zeid. Copyright © 2022 by Kareem James Abu-Zeid. Reprinted with the permission of World Poetry Books, New York City, New York, worldpoetrybooks.com.

Kareem James Abu-Zeid is a translator, editor, writer, teacher, and scholar who works across multiple languages. He has received numerous awards, fellowships, honors, and residencies for his work, including PEN Center USA's 2017 Translation Prize, the 2022 Sarah Maguire Prize for Poetry in Translation, a 2018 National Endowment for the Arts translation grant, the 2015 Northern California Book Award for Best Translated Poetry, Poetry Magazine's 2014 translation prize, a Fulbright Research Fellowship in Germany, a CASA Fellowship in Cairo, and residencies from the Lannan Foundation and the Banff Centre for the Arts. He is also the author of The Poetics of Adonis and Yves Bonnefoy: Poetry as Spiritual Practice (Resources in Arabic and Islamic Studies, Lockwood Press, 2021). 

 

Hooligans & forbans resserrent
autour de nous le cercle de l’enfer

Dieu n’a rien à voir avec cela


Ah échapper au royaume des mythes
& des légendes       Haïfa ne sera pas
Grenade & nous ne vous ferons pas
ce cadeau de sauter du haut de
la falaise dans une mer de feu*

notre cri de cristal à la face du soleil


tant peine que         cœur contienne
tant longue               nuit des longs couteaux
& si lente                   aube à naître



*C’est à Sauteurs, village de pêcheurs surplombant la baie éponyme et situé à l’extrême nord de l’île de La Grenade dans les Caraïbes, qu’une quarantaine d’autochtones menacés par la colonisation française sautèrent avec femmes et enfants d’une falaise haute de 40 mètres. Derek Walcott relate cet épisode dans sa biographie poétique Une autre vie (Gallimard, 2002, trad. Claire Malroux), en évoquant le “cri de cristal” lancé au moment du saut.

Extrait de Chaos, Traversée (Feuille de Thé, 2019).

A French-language poet from the Palestinian diaspora, Olivia Elias was born in Haifa in 1944. Until she was 16, she lived in Lebanon—where her family had taken refuge in 1948—and then on three continents. Elias only began publishing in February 2015. Since then she has published Ton nom de Palestine (Éditions Al Manar, 2017), Chaos, Traversée (La feuille de thé, 2019) and in May 2025, Ce Mont qui regarde la mer (Cambourakis). In 2022, she made her English-language debut with Chaos, Crossing (World Poetry), a bilingual and expanded version of Chaos, Traversée, followed in 2023 by Your Name, Palestine (World Poetry). Translated into several languages, her poems have appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies in France and abroad. Chaos, Crossing was a finalist for the Sarah Maguire 2024 International Prize For Poetry In Translation.

Read Olivia Elias interviewed by Jérémy Victor Robert.