Enter Book

By Dalia Taha

Translated By Sara ElkamelEnter Book (2 versions)

Translated from the Arabic

The book you held in your hands 

now lies on the nightstand by your bed, in its heart 

the lines you sketched

under the sentences you read more than once, bewildered,

before you put the book down

and started pacing aimlessly between the rooms.

You let it drown you for a full week,

took it everywhere you went;

you read it alone in bed,

and stretched out on the sofa while the family’s voices

drifted toward you from the other room. 

Whenever you’d lift your head, 

you found yourself 

face-to-face with the world,

glancing at the sky outside your window; 

ready, at last, to converse with the hills. 

Every book grants you the language

you need to make contact 

with something you had no idea even existed:

a tree’s pores, a fox’s nose, 

sadness on a face, a nation’s suffering. 

Look how beautiful you look as you read. 

Look how peaceful you look 

as you let an entire continent colonize you; 

as you lay the book down on the nightstand, 

as if returning to the world 

something that belongs to it—

as you stand, dazzled by the hills

as though the book, too, 

has returned to the world 

something that belongs to it.