TWO POEMS
By Olivia Elias
Translated by Jérémy Victor Robert
November 19, 2025
of a blue…so blue
nothing to hold on to….no more suitcases
& nothing left to take away
memories even devoured by
hunger
grief
silence
between two explosions & the cries of the little ones
along the shore of a sea that laments of no longer
being able to feed its children
& under a sky that doesn’t remember anymore
that….for millennia….it was of
a blue
so
blue
phantom arms
a young Christ….alive
alive…….mutilated
who will not rise from the dead
all his life will have to walk….amputated
his way to the Golgotha
his phantom arms…grafted to his body
this pain….his mother his father
his sisters & brothers too
an ocean of pain swelling every day
***
the beautiful child
his beauty…his gentleness
his dignity
wolves & vultures dancing
……all around
their infernal dance
since….since the dawn of time
swelling
…………..the past
an ever more monstrous wave
born in
………….barbarism
he is…the beautiful child
………………….the mutilated lamb
we are
Note: This poem was inspired by the portrait of Mahmoud Ajjour, a nine-year-old Palestinian boy who was evacuated to Doha after an explosion tore off one of his arms and maimed the other while he was fleeing, with his family, an Israeli attack on his home in Gaza. The photo, taken by Palestinian photographer Samar Abu Elouf, won first prize in the 2025 World Press Photo competition.
A poet from the Palestinian diaspora, born in Haifa in 1944, Olivia Elias writes in French. Until the age of 16, she lived in Lebanon, where her family took refuge in 1948, then in Montreal, where she studied and taught economics, before settling in France. Olivia Elias, only decided to publish in 2015 and her fourth collection Ce Mont qui regarde la mer (This Mount Overlooking the Sea) will be released in May 2025, in France. In 2022, she made her English debut with Chaos, Crossing, a bilingual and expanded version of Chaos, Traversée, followed a year later by the chapbook Your Name, Palestine (World Poetry, editor of both). Her poetry, translated into several languages, appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies, in France and abroad. Marked by uprootedness and exile, it express a deep sense of solidarity with those banished and excluded from a dignified life. One of World Literature Today’s notable translations of 2022, Chaos, Crossing was finalist of the 2024 Sarah Maguire Prize for Poetry in Translation.
Jérémy Victor Robert is a translator between English and French who works and lives in his native Réunion Island. He published French translations of Sarah Riggs’ Murmurations (APIC, 2021, with Marie Borel), Donna Stonecipher’s Model City (joca seria, 2020), and Etel Adnan’s Sea & Fog (L’Attente, 2015). He recently translated Michael Palmer’s Little Elegies for Sister Satan, excerpts of which were posted online by Revue Catastrophes. Together with Sarah Riggs, he translated Olivia Elias’ Your Name, Palestine (World Poetry Books, 2023).
