Najwan Darwish's "All of It" (translated by Kareem James Abu-Zeid)

Thoughts on all of it.

All of It

Carriages drawn by cheerful horses
and the tunes of accordions,
or sullen buses
and relatives weeping at their doors—
it's all a journey, dear,
and here we are now, back from it.

I name it earth, and am not ashamed.
It's all earth.
It's all death.
All of it.


from Exhausted on the Cross (NYRB Poets, 2021)

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One of my favorite little books of forever-time is by the French writer Georges Perec. It’s titled An Attempt at Exhausting a Place in Paris, and it details — in short, observational prose — what Perec notices while sitting in Place Saint-Sulplice in the Latin Quarter of Paris. “My intention,” he writes, “was to describe…that which is generally not taken note of, that which is not noticed, that which has no importance: what happens when nothing happens other than the weather, people, cars, and clouds.”

There’s two pages I really love in that book. They are back to back. On one side, Perec writes:

In the middle of the street, a man is on the lookout for taxis (there are no more taxis at the taxi stand)

An 86 passes by. A 96 passes by. A “Tony-gencyl” deliveryman passes by.

Malissard Dubernay rapid transit passes by.

Again the pigeons go round the square. What triggers off this unified movement? It doesn’t seem linked to any exterior stimulus (explosion, detonation, change in light, rain, etc.) nor to any particular motivation; it seems completely gratuitous: the birds suddenly take flight, go round the square and return to settle on the district council building’s gutter.

It is two twenty.

On the other page, Perec writes:

Funeral wreaths are being brought out of the church.

It is two thirty.

A 63, an 87, an 86, another 86, and a 96 go by.

An old woman shades her eyes with her hand to make out the number of the bus that’s coming (I can infer from her disappointed look that she’s waiting for the 70)

They’re bringing out the casket. The funeral chimes start ringing again.

The hearse leaves, followed by a 204 and a green Mehari.

An 87

A 63

The funeral chimes stop

A 96

It is a quarter after three.

Pause.

In both of these short moments, taken from the same day of observation, Perec shows what is so strange and marvelous (and I mean that word, something to be marveled at) and absurd and curious and beautiful and sad about this world. There are the pigeons, whose behavior remains unknown but whose behavior is still a marvel to behold. I mean, who hasn’t looked upon a flock of pigeons resting together on a balcony or a building’s ledge and then seen them all take off together, soar in a great wide circle, and then return to the exact spot in which they had once alit? And there are the buses that keep coming, and there is the woman whose bus still hasn’t come. And, again, who hasn’t felt that distinct disappointment, that frustration that makes you think there is something vengeful at work in the world, when the bus you want is the only one that doesn’t come? And, in the midst of it all, there is the funeral ending, and the flowers and wreaths processed out of the massive cathedral, and the body too, and the bells, the bells that seem to never stop ringing until they do. All of that. All at once. All in one place. Grief and frustration and curiosity and the ongoing ongoingness of it all.

I thought of Perec’s book when I picked up Exhausted on the Cross to read again. I keep a stack of NYRB Poets books next to a Chinese money plant that sits on a windowsill in front of a window that took two years of trying to finally open. It had been painted shut, in the way of New York City apartments. Now, due to repetitive force, a butter knife traced along the edges, and some luck, it is not painted shut, and there is a tomato plant sitting on the fire escape that I would never have been able to access if there had been a fire over a year ago. The plant has grown, at this point, a single ripe tomato. Cherished thing, it is.

Anyways, earlier this week, I picked Darwish’s book off the stack and remembered why I loved his blunt, wry, critical voice so much. One poem, “This Paradise,” reads in full:

I'm losing it,
even though I'm just a passerby
already broken by loss.

And another, “As for Me,” reads:

You wish man was a stone.
As for me, I wish man was a river
sweeping himself away,
or a flock of trees
at the sky's edge.

These poems, short and surprising and playful, embody Darwish’s style to me. Writing into conflict, the consequences of an increasingly technological world, and the ravages of greed and power, Darwish reminds me of human frailty — that we are as broken as we are beautiful, and that death is as near and intimate to us as love. I find him wanting us to recognize that frailty. To be less stones than rivers. To be more fluid between the polarities. To be less dead weight than live weight, which — because of our living — means we are moving towards our death and in recognition and awareness of it at all times.

And so, when I read today’s poem, I thought of Perec’s book. I thought, too, of Darwish’s title, “All of It,” and how blunt it is, how it leaves no room for anything but all — the same way Perec attempts to exhaust an entire place, which is not possible, though I love the effort. And I thought, finally, of those first four lines:

Carriages drawn by cheerful horses
and the tunes of accordions,
or sullen buses
and relatives weeping at their doors—

Here is the same scene as Perec’s moment in Place Saint-Sulpice, and yet entirely different. Here are the sullen buses, the accordions instead of bells, those who are weeping, almost certainly, in the periphery of what Perec observes, and in the forefront of what Darwish sees. It is a testament to the ordinary, isn’t it? How it goes on somewhere, and always.

This is the last poem in Darwish’s book, and I feel it holding the weight of all the others, which, like the poems above, are often short and punchy, juxtaposing the expectations of so much (colonialism, capitalism, and more) with a more widened, nuanced view of reality. It’s why, craft-wise, I’m drawn to that white space after the first stanza. In that first stanza, Darwish offers us a scene. It’s a scene, as I just mentioned, not unlike Perec’s — filled with the ordinary, and all that the ordinary is filled with. But then Darwish pauses. He offers a space. It feels large, that white space. It’s a breath, one more breath, another. And then he gives us this line:

I name it earth, and am not ashamed.

What a powerful, powerful line. There is so much pulsing within it. Who is the I, I wonder? Who is the speaker? Does Darwish embody a godlike figure, as the title of the book suggests? Is this a creator, speaking about the fact of their naming? Or is this someone ordinary? As ordinary as you or me? Either way, it’s those last three words of the line that I’m drawn to: am not ashamed.

The answer to the questions I asked above dictate the reasons for the shame, don’t they? If this is some sort of creator speaking, then the shame might come from the notion that this world — full of life and death and everything in between as it is — is not as perfect as it could be. It contains sullenness. It contains grief even in the midst of joy. And if this is an ordinary person speaking, then that shame isn’t about the world so much as it is about one’s view of the world. Do you know what I mean? It would be as if the speaker of the poem is saying I am not ashamed to call this home.

Regardless of who the speaker is, I value Darwish’s poem for both ideas of that proposed shame, and I value Darwish even more for resisting the shame. This is the world we live in, Darwish seems to be saying, and I choose not to be ashamed about it. And why not, then? Why not be ashamed? Darwish writes:

It's all earth.
It's all death.
All of it.

It’s a question of totality. If what we name as experience is all of experience, and if what we name as life is all of life, then it includes all possible things. It includes birth and death; it includes joy and sorrow; it includes everything in between. We can be ashamed, I think, for our work within this all-ness. We can be ashamed, I think, for our lack of work, our misdirection, our stubbornness, whatever. We can get over that shame, too. We can forgive ourselves. But we can’t be ashamed for what this is. That’s what I think Darwish is getting at here. To be ashamed for the world itself would be like standing on the shore of the Atlantic Ocean, the rocky coast of Maine at your feet, wind sweeping the hair from your face, pretending yourself Winslow Homer, and then wishing that the ocean was bigger, or more eventful, or more spirited. No. Why would you do that? Doing that would be a shame. This is the world. We are in it. It’s all earth. It’s all life. It’s all death. It is what it is. So often our actions go against that recognition; they resist the fullness of the world, the all-ness of it all.

In At Seventy, which I already know I will be drawing from again and again in these little essays, May Sarton writes:

I feel happy to be keeping a journal again. I have missed it, missed “naming things” as they appear, missed the half hour when I push all duties aside and savor the experience of being alive in this beautiful place.

I read that not long after reading Darwish’s poem and thinking of Perec’s book. It is a real joy to read Sarton’s work and to be reminded that there is an undeniable sense of fullness in being able to sit within a moment and notice however much you can, however disparate, however absurd, however beautiful, however strange.

Like how now, as I am typing this — the tomato plant on the fire escape, an ambulance siren in the distance, rain clouds blooming overhead. Like how, maybe a few hours ago, the coins given to me in exchange for my bills at the laundromat were handed to me in a cardboard container that once was full of mushrooms. Like how, if I look at the small stretch of sidewalk I can see down below my window, there is an older woman who, nearly every day, scatters crumbs around her as she walks, and the pigeons come from seemingly miles away in massive, organized flocks to eat what she scatters. They land on her shoulders sometimes; they land on her wrist. And like how I just saw that the man in my neighborhood who has two beautiful, slobbering bulldogs that chase tennis balls he shoots out of a Nerf gun — well, he now has two ferrets who walk around with him, too. They cross the street with him, and he talks to them like they are full of soul and heart and feeling, which I imagine they are. And how the place where he walks them is near the deli which is also near the assisted living home which is also near the pizza place which is also near the laundromat which is also near the bar, and the ambulances scream down the street and so do the cars and also, sometimes, massive groups of kids on bikes doing tricks and wheelies, and there is a man, too, who brings a boombox to one intersection and dances the entire day. He just dances and dances and dances. That’s all, but it’s not even close to all of it.

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Some Notes:

1. The Vermont Studio Center, which is a really wonderful and generative place for writers, was flooded last week. You can follow them on Instagram here. Consider donating to aid in their rebuilding and restorative efforts here.

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