No One Will Know You Tomorrow

“A lush bouquet of essential poems from one of our species’ most urgent living poets. Like all great poets, Darwish seeks to chart a holistic cosmos of body, mind, and spirit. But his body, mind, and spirit live on earth, where there are guns and militarized borders, razed buildings, and war orphans. Nevertheless, these are poems of testimony, of presence and the persistence of joy: ‘In an end that leads / to an endless end, / I lived.’”—Kaveh Akbar, author of Martyr! “A remarkable work of witness and translation. These poems, wry and sensual, widen the breach in the heart. Najwan Darwish is a prophet of our hard, exhausted time—the sea his ancient muse, Palestine his Andalus, language his only Paradise.”—Yasmine Seale, translator of The Annotated Arabian Nights “I return to the poetry of Najwan Darwish—that effortless, natural blend of high lyricism and tragic history—again and again, year after year. In the midst of the sobering horror of our moment, the poet searches for the timeless, the metaphysical. This search is wisdom: ‘Take refuge in language,’ he advises. ‘It’s the only solid ground / for ships.’ Lucky are the readers who find Darwish’s work for the first time. What a journey awaits your ships.”—Ilya Kaminsky, author of Deaf Republic “An enthralling and essential collection. The cultural, political, physical, and intimate geographies of this book widen as we read. These verses are enduring monuments, and translator Kareem James Abu-Zeid reaches the quietest beats of every poem, masterfully transporting Darwish’s wit and lyricism from Arabic into English.”—Nathalie Handal, author of Life in a Country Album “I’ve seen nothing of what I believed, but if a God exists it is the same God for me and for the Palestinian poet Najwan Darwish.”—Raúl Zurita, author of INRI