The only one missing in the morning raid was a Kurd from the north,who had gone to the basement to look for a packet of tea.When his mother stepped off the bus days laterwe took her to a grave: the grave of a Yemeni boy from Mukalla in Hadhramaut.She planted a lemon treeand recited the Fatiha in uncertain Arabic and mournedin limpid Kurdish over the Yemeni’s grave.She sprinkled the grave with water she had broughtfrom her village in Syria far away.We had buried them all. There were five.The Kurdish woman sat all night by the Yemeni’s grave as her son went on his way, stumblingthrough the basement.
The Kurdish woman’s visit
Ghassan Zaqtan
Translated from the Arabic by Robin Moger
Feature Date
Series
- Translation
Selected By
Share This Poem
Print This Poem
“The Kurdish woman’s visit” from THE TOWN I NEVER TOLD YOU ABOUT: by Ghassan Zaqtan.
Published by Seagull Books on February 5, 2026.
English Translation Copyright © 2026 by Robin Moger.
All rights reserved.
Reproduced by Poetry Daily with permission.
Poet and novelist and editor Ghassan Zaqtan was born in Beit Jala in 1954 in the West Bank, and lived in Jordan, Syria and Tunisia before returning to Palestine following the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993. He currently lives in Ramallah. He is recognised as one of the preeminent contemporary Palestinian poets. He has published over a dozen collections of poetry and four novellas, including a semi-autobiographical trilogy (Describing The Past, Where the Bird Disappeared, and An Old Carriage With Windows) that has been issued by Seagull Books in English translation by Samuel Wilder. Fady Joudah’s translation of Like A Straw Bird It Follows Me was awarded the Griffin Poetry Prize in 2013, and Joudah’s translation of another collection, The Silence That Remains, was published by Copper Canyon Press in 2017. He has been twice shortlisted for The Neustadt International Prize for Literature.
Robin Moger is a translator of Arabic based in L’Hospitalet de Llobregat, Catalunya. He is twice winner of the Saif Ghobash Banipal Prize for Arabic Literature in Translation and his translation of Iman Mersal’s Traces of Enayat was awarded the 2023 James Tait Black Prize for Biography. His most recent publications include Sleep Phase by Mohammed Kheir (Two Lines Press, 2025) and Iman Mersal’s Mother and Its Ghosts (Transit Books, 2025). Recent book-length poetry include two collections by Ghassan Zaqtan, Strangers In Light Coats and The Town I Never Told You About (Seagull Books, 2023 and 2026), Samer Abu Hawwash’s From The River To The Sea (Banipal Books, 2025), a selection of the poems of Lebanese poet Wadih Saadeh entitled A Horse at the Door (Tenement Press, 2024), and, with Yasmine Seale, Agitated Air: Poems After Ibn Arabi (Tenement Press, 2022) a correspondence through translations of the poetry of the Andalusian mystic Ibn Arabi.
A haunting, lyrical meditation on memory, loss, and homeland, with the poems threading together the personal and the collective in a Palestine shaped by conflict and beauty.
The Town I Never Told You About gathers poems written by celebrated Palestinian poet Ghassan Zaqtan between 2022 and 2024, at a time of intensifying conflict ravaging his homeland. Emerging from both memory and imagination, these poems trace the contours of hillscapes and villages, mapping a Palestine that is both historical and mythic, personal and collective. In Zaqtan’s hands, language threads its way through time—winding across landscapes marked by war, displacement, and enduring beauty. Each poem feels like part of a longer thread: a moment lifted from an ongoing inner epic, stitched into being with dreamlike clarity and haunting precision.
Long meditative pieces drift through shadow and sunlight, while other poems strike with the sharpness of remembered incident. This is poetry as pilgrimage—quiet, persistent, and full of echoes. A book that doesn’t so much end as continue resonating long after the last page is turned.
Poetry Daily Depends on You
With your support, we make reading the best contemporary poetry a treasured daily experience. Consider a contribution today.
