The poem “موت برتقالي” originally appeared in al-Araby al-Jadeed on December 5, 2024.
Orange Death
By Ramzi Salem
I love autumn,
and I hate its shades of orange
that remind me of death,
of sparks and flames,
of the scent of gunpowder and blood,
of the angry, livid sky—
raging, frayed,
raining down lava
and tons of hell:
ready, alert,
and stacked up in barrels
with neither pity nor mercy.
How do I survive,
the pale orange leaves
cascading down on my head
like fragments of exile—
with neither language nor sun,
screaming in my face,
scouring off its features.
Every time a leaf falls,
I close my eyes,
I plug my ears—
so the birds don’t witness my death and
abandon my grandmother’s balcony;
so the wind doesn’t settle on my grave.
Every time a leaf falls,
an orange bomb explodes.
Its echo ricochets in my heart
and plants its ashes in my chest.
It burns the poems of olives,
harvests the fields of memories,
drowns the boats of tears,
and lowers the curtains of nothingness—
on the witnesses of the morning
and the obsessions of the evening.
Give me back the autumn I love
and scrub the hate of orange from my heart,
so I might recover the face of mother sky
and embrace a cloud torn apart by coughs.
Give me back the autumn I love—
to gather the leaves of life, from loss,
and draw with autumn’s tears
a homeland,
shaded by the palms of peace
and of the hungry.
Translated by M Lynx Qualey
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Ramzi Salem is a Palestinian poet who lives in Belgium. He has published many poems addressing various topics, including Palestine, exile, homesickness, and recurring wars. He is currently working on his first collection, which primarily highlights the disastrous effects of the devastating war that erupted in the Gaza Strip on October 7, 2023. This collection deeply explores the pain of loss, suffering, hunger, and cold, and expresses his feelings as an expatriate—his constant anxiety and fear, along with longing and homesickness. It also reflects on the world’s failure and the loss of humanity.