“In times of dread, artists must never remain silent. This is precisely the time when artists go to work. There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That’s how civilizations heal.”
— Toni Morrison in No Place for Self-Pity, No Room for Fear, April 6, 2015
In the face of genocide’s abyss, we cling to aphorisms—those compact, enigmatic lifelines—for moral, spiritual, and political anchorage. From Cioran to Hoffer, their timeless vitality steadies and stirs the soul. I chance upon Palestine Wail, the latest anthology of poems by Yahia Lababidi that adds to the collection of his aphorisms on morality and mortality, Quarantine Notes (Fomite Press, 2023), Desert Songs (Rowayat, 2022), a bilingual, photographic account of mystical encounters in the desert, and Learning to Pray (Kelsay Books, 2021), a collection of spiritual reflections.
Today, the aphorism finds an uncanny resonance in the restless churn of reels, memes, tweets, and soundbites. Its brevity aligns with the frenetic pace of digital life, yet its depth distinguishes it from the ephemeral chatter of the internet age. For all its ubiquity, the aphorism remains elusive, defying sustained scrutiny. Perhaps its protean nature makes it slippery, or as E.M. Cioran observed, dissecting it risks robbing it of its very life. To truly engage with aphorisms is to move beyond the surface, to linger and read with deliberate slowness, as Nietzsche recommended. In doing so, one uncovers their hidden depths, their secret vitality. They are not merely fleeting thoughts but living forms laden with meaning and memory, carrying across centuries the profound realization that brevity can hold infinity. The aphorism endures because it speaks to the mind’s craving for succinctness and the soul’s hunger for depth, marrying both in a form that is as eternal as it is elusive.
Aphorism as a literary device
The aphorism is a paradox: brief yet boundless, ancient yet unyieldingly modern. As a literary form, it possesses a deep, hidden life—a quiet but profound vitality that defies the limits of time and culture. It has survived millennia like an intellectual seed pod, its smallness shielding a vastness within. From the Vedic sutras to Pascal’s fracturing Cartesian certainties to Nietzsche’s razor-sharp critiques of European philosophy, the aphorism has been a resilient carrier of human thought. It is a nomadic form, crossing epochs and geographies, refusing to be tied down by the weight of systematic thinking. Instead, it floats—a vessel light enough to sail through time yet dense enough to contain truths that defy decay. Its power lies in what it says and how it lives, as both an invitation and a provocation.
Across history, the aphorism has thrived on its refusal to conform. It resists the architectonic impulse to systematize and instead revels in its fragmentation. Pascal’s fragments sidestepped the monoliths of rationalism to glimpse a divine, fractured reality. At the same time, Nietzsche turned philosophy into a battlefield of short, barbed truths, rejecting the ponderous machinery of his predecessors. In its defiance of linearity, the aphorism mirrors life itself: fragmented, contingent, and alive. It does not seek resolution; it thrives on ambiguity, capturing fleeting truths and ephemeral experiences in a form that feels alive, pulsing with thought. It is not just a literary form but a way of seeing—a constellation of insights whose connections we are invited to trace anew with each reading.
An Arab-American of Palestinian background, Yahia Lababidi’s Palestine Wail emerges as an aphorism. This piercing cry condenses the sprawling tragedy of Gaza into a timeless vessel of truth, offering moral clarity and a spiritual anchor amidst despair. His aphorism carries the unmistakable soul of poetry, each sentence an elegy to existence itself, vibrating with the rhythm of anguish and the weight of unspeakable truths. His alchemical language transforms despair into beauty as if articulating the void offers fleeting redemption. As he writes In Palestinian Music:” Listening to Palestinian music, I wept… at the pity, longing, waste of it all.” Lababidi captures the cathartic power of art, and this moment of personal vulnerability underscores the transformative role of music as both a repository of cultural memory and a medium for collective mourning. The act of weeping becomes an acknowledgement of shared humanity and an emotional bridge between the poet and his subject.
Aphoristic brilliance and moral urgency
The silence of Western allies, coupled with their complicity, looms as a heavier burden on Gaza than even the bombs, bullets, and starvation that have claimed untold lives. This deadly cocktail—inaction mixed with indifference—is the essence of Yahia Lababidi’s poignant poetry in Palestine Wail. The poet, renowned for his aphoristic brilliance and moral urgency, confronts these atrocities with fury and compassion. In his poem During a Genocide, Lababidi starkly portrays the moral vacuum of silence confronting the inadequacy of language during moments of extreme suffering:
“During a genocide, most words lose their meaning.
Some sound empty, others strange.
Even a moan or sigh is better
than false words or, worse, a loud and wounding silence.”
Lababidi’s engagement with Gaza is deeply personal, rooted in his Palestinian grandmother’s forced expulsion from Jerusalem decades before the Nakba. Her family, guardians of the Prophet David’s tomb for centuries, lost everything when the British Mandate ended, a history that resonates in Lababidi’s poetic exploration of exile, memory, and pain.
In Palestine Wail, Lababidi channels this heritage into a collection that mourns the relentless suffering in Gaza while grappling with universal questions of justice and humanity. How can a poet, armed only with words, do justice to such overwhelming horror? He answers by acknowledging the limits of language and, paradoxically, using those limits to amplify the magnitude of grief and resilience.
In Hope, the opening poem, he reflects on the fragility and necessity of Hope:
“Hope is slimmer than you think,
less steady on its feet.
It cries itself to sleep,
yet cheats death quietly,
keeping its secret safe.”
He knows the moral stakes of silence, which he calls a “pandemic of indifference.” Citing Elie Wiesel’s aphorism—“The opposite of love is not hate but indifference”—, he uses poems like The Elephant in the Room to expose how polite avoidance becomes complicity:
“How polite our friends,
the way they avoid
mention of complicated affairs—
Palestinian and Israeli.
Is it because they find it rude
to talk murder over dinner?
Or is this bloody mess
too embarrassing,
a drawn-out family feud?”
Lababidi insists that silence is no neutral stance—it is a moral failure. In Say Something, he implores:
“If you’re uncomfortable saying genocide,
say mass murder, say boneyard,
say humanity under rubble.
At least, say not in my name.”
The poet’s ire also extends to Western leaders and media, whose complicity he scorns in Stranger in a Strange Land:
“America is a gaslighting partner,
insisting on being loved,
no—worshipped—
as saviour and saint.”
Lababidi’s afterword amplifies his poetic outrage with pointed critiques of media narratives and political indifference, quoting Malcolm X: “The newspapers will have you hating the oppressed and loving their oppressors.” He honours Palestinian journalists, targeted and silenced for exposing the unspeakable truths of Gaza, calling them the most dangerous witnesses of all.
However, he does not succumb entirely to despair. His collection traces a trajectory from anguish to an effort—however tenuous—to find Hope and healing. In Radical Love, he draws connections between historical cycles of violence and the necessity of breaking them:
“Radical love understands
there is no October 7, 2023,
without May 15, 1948…
our September 11th.”
The poet reminds readers of the spiritual and moral laws that bind humanity. If we fail to heed the cries of the oppressed, he warns, violence will inevitably return to haunt us all:
“Turn your back on the wailing of the world,
and violence, like a karmic serpent,
will find its way to your doorstep.”
How to Protest explores the ethical dimensions of activism:
“It is, infinitely, tricky
To embody an Ideal:
Truth, Beauty, Justice, Peace
Are not at all easy to wear
Anger, even righteous, can
wear us out and soon devolve
into its opposite: violent hate.”
What is life-sustaining,
Like milk, will curdle if left
unattended, in the heat.
This meditation on the fragility of ideals underscores the difficulty of sustaining nonviolent resistance. The poem’s measured tone and reflective quality caution against the corrosive effects of unchecked anger, emphasizing instead the sustaining power of hope and commitment.
In Columbia University, Lababidi celebrates youth activism as a vital force for justice, observing:
“Bless these natural born idealists… there is no looking away, no foreign soil, no Others.”
This declaration dismantles the notion of moral detachment, advocating for global solidarity in the face of oppression. Lababidi’s celebration of student movements reflects his faith in younger generations as agents of transformative change.
In just under 100 pages, Lababidi weaves grief, rage, and compassion into a tapestry of moral clarity, forcing readers to confront the cost of indifference. If his words are not heeded, Gaza will indeed stand as a testament to one of the most egregious genocides of the century, its suffering echoing across generations—much like the Holocaust, with silence and complicity damning us all over again.
A Structure of Lament and Resilience
Yahia Lababidi’s Palestine Wail is an evocative collection of poems that serves as a profound tribute to the resilience, pain, and enduring spirit of the Palestinian people. Dedicated to his grandmother, Rabiha Dajani, who was displaced from her homeland and multiple times subsequently, the anthology is profoundly layered, combining spiritual reflection with pointed political critique, embodying the enduring tension between Hope and despair. The dedication to his grandmother encapsulates the essence of the Palestinian narrative—one of displacement, fortitude, and an unrelenting aspiration to return. Through her story, he anchors the vast political struggles of exile within a profoundly human, personal framework, amplifying their emotional gravity.
Lababidi’s poetry reflects a deeply personal and political engagement with the ongoing tragedy in Gaza. Structured across three sections—”Unbearable Casualties,” “Lingering at the Threshold,” and “On a Far Shore”—the poems traverse a spectrum of emotions, from anger and despair to spiritual reflection and Hope. But not an ounce of hate. The poet’s voice is at once deeply rooted in Palestinian heritage and infused with a universal longing for peace and healing. Each segment offers a distinct vantage point on the Palestinian experience.
The first section channels raw grief and outrage, documenting the unbearable weight of loss in Gaza. It is underscored by imagery that evokes both immediacy and universality. Lababidi, drawing from the traditions of Palestinian resistance literature, challenges the reader to confront not just the tragedy of displacement but its lingering effects on identity and memory.
The second section shifts to a quieter, more meditative tone. Here, the poet navigates liminality—what it means to inhabit the “threshold” of being both connected to and estranged from one’s homeland. The spiritual dimension becomes more pronounced as Lababidi employs metaphors of fasting and prayer, tying the physical and emotional toll of conflict to a broader existential inquiry. This section is where the anthology finds its philosophical depth, exploring how suffering can be transformed into a practice of endurance and even grace.
In the final section, On a Far Shore, the poet situates the Palestinian narrative within a global context. This part seeks reconciliation—not in the naive sense of forgetting or forgiving, but in acknowledging shared humanity amid seemingly irreconcilable differences. The tone here is lighter, tinged with Hope, as Lababidi uses the natural world as a metaphor for regeneration and continuity.
By the time one finishes reading, the cover of the volume looms large in memory, consciously adorned with Sliman Mansour’s Symbol of Hope. His artwork transcends mere depiction, embodying the unyielding resilience of a people bound to their land and history, a luminous testament to endurance that lingers long after the final page.
Rejection of poetry as mere witness
As if heeding Mahmoud Darwish lines in Silence for Gaza (1973),” Gaza does not propel people to cool contemplation; rather she propels them to erupt and collide and with the truth,” Lababidi’s Palestine Wail is an exquisite and urgent testament, fusing righteous indignation with a hushed, contemplative grace. Lababidi examines the seismic wounds of displacement and loss through the prism of Palestinian resistance literature, yet his verses seek not merely to mourn but to reconcile. His voice, steeped in ancestral memory and the cadences of Palestinian heritage, reverberates with a universal longing—a profound yearning for healing and the fragile possibility of peace. Each poem shimmers like an elegy woven with defiance, transforming individual suffering into a luminous, collective call for dignity and justice.
The spiritual and philosophical depth of Lababidi’s work forms its bedrock. Drawing on the ascetic traditions of fasting and prayer, he reflects on the paradoxes of sacrifice and gratitude, imbuing his lines with an almost sacred resonance. Amid the solemnity, moments of mordant wit offer unexpected flashes of levity, reminding us of the stubborn persistence of light within the darkest recesses. He writes in Peace, Lily:
In the midst of a genocide,
Our Peace Lily began to bloom
For years, it withheld its flowers,
It could not bear it any longer
& granted us radiant relief.
This delicate interplay of shadow and illumination lends the collection a quiet majesty, a sense that the spirit endures and resists even amid the devastation.
However, Palestine Wail is no mere anthology of mourning; it is a living, breathing act of defiance. With unflinching precision, Lababidi challenges the dominant narratives that seek to obscure the humanity of Gaza, reimagining its shattered landscape not as a graveyard but as a locus of unyielding resilience. His vivid, haunting imagery evokes both the aching particularity of exile and the vast, shared responsibility of bearing witness. Nevertheless, Palestine Wail transcends mere observation. It confronts the harsh realities of occupation and genocide without succumbing to despair. Rooted in moral inquiry and spiritual reflection, these poems preserve the voices of the displaced and dispossessed, refusing to be silenced. More than a record of the past, Palestine Wail is a clarion call for justice, a hymn to endurance, and a profound affirmation of literature’s power to illuminate the truth. For him, it is “poetry as spiritual journalism”.
So, order your copy of Palestine Wail and let Labadidi’s poignant verses accompany the year-end soul-searching. Read them aloud.
Narendra Pachkhédé is a critic, essayist and writer who splits his time between Toronto, London and Geneva.