You Can’t by Maya Abu Al-Hayyat

By T.

19 December 2023

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You Can't
Maya Abu Al-Hayyat
Translated by Fady Joudah

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.

MARGINALIA

1.
I’ve been told no in so many ways, and there were years when I believed it. I shrank myself before anyone had to ask. I thought survival meant staying close to the trunk, pretending not to want more than the light I was given.

2.
I keep telling myself: insist on your own weight, your own shape. Take up space.

3.
Aren’t we all a threat at some point. Look at the undeniable body of your life—

4.
And maybe it’s true. All leaves fall. May the universe forgive me if I cling for longer than I should.

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This poem appeared in You Can Be the Last Leaf by Maya Abu Al-Hayyat, published by Milkweed Editions, 2019. (Available on: Amazon • Bookshop)

DESCRIPTION

“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.” (Source)

ABOUT MAYA ABU AL-HAYYAT

Maya Abu Al-Hayyat is a Beirut-born, Palestinian novelist and poet living in Jerusalem. She is the author of four collections of poems, including You Can Be the Last Leaf (Milkweed, 2022), 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).… (more)