Yahia Lababidi
@ysl.bsky.social
Author of 🇵🇸 If You Cannot Say Genocide & 15 other books Poetry, aphorisms, and essays on art, faith, and conscience Liberties | Salmagundi | World Literature Today 📚 amazon.com/author/yahialababidi
On the birthday of the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ, remembering the man the Qur’an calls “a mercy to the worlds.” "Indeed, in the body there is a piece of flesh which, if it is sound, the whole body is sound, and if it is corrupt, the whole body is corrupt. Indeed, it is the heart.” —Hadith
The role of the intellectual? Society's diagnostician & conscience.
"The art of losing isn’t hard to master ... practice losing farther, losing faster" soundcloud.com/yahia-lababi... #poetry #writingcommunity
One Art, by Elizabeth Bishop - read by Yahia Lababidi
One Art The art of losing isn’t hard to master; so many things seem filled with the intent to be lost that their loss is no disaster. Lose something every day. Accept the fluster of lost door keys,
soundcloud.com
...retiring to the inner space of one's ruling part... —Marcus Aurelius
Essences are not capable of annihilation; attributes, however, can be annihilated. * Mujizat (miracles) involve publicity; karamat (blessings/favors) secrecy.' — Al Hujwiri, Persian Sufi scholar, writer and poet (11th Century AD); author of Kashf Al-Mahjub (Revelation of the Veiled) #booksky
Have the nature of a dervish, then wear a stylish cap. —Sufi saying * In the mystic path, he who says 'I have arrived' has gone astray. —Al Hujwiri
"The noble art of losing face may one day save the human race and turn into eternal merit what weaker minds would call disgrace." —Piet Hein, Danish poet and scientist (1905-1996)
My #poetry translated into Dutch and published in Poëziekrant, a leading Flemish literary journal. You can listen to a reading in English, here, on SoundCloud: soundcloud.com/yahia-lababi... #reading #writing
“The Many Edward Saids: Exile and Vision” overland.org.au/previous-iss... @overlandjournal.bsky.social #Palestine #Israel #news #culture #writing
The many Edward Saids: exile and vision - Overland literary journal
As Gaza burns and the world’s cameras turn elsewhere, I find myself returning to the many Edward Saids: scholar, critic, dissident, even a kind of spiritual figure who bore witness with uncommon clari...
overland.org.au
Mourning the great Palestinian artist Sliman Mansour, who died today at 79. Personally grateful that he generously gifted me the use of his beautiful #art for the cover of my #poetry collection, Palestine Wail. Rest in peace, dear Sliman. Your #Palestine remains luminous. 🇵🇸🕊️
Mourning the great Palestinian artist Sliman Mansour, who died today at 79. Personally grateful that he generously gifted me the use of his beautiful #art for the cover of my #poetry collection, Palestine Wail. Rest in peace, dear Sliman. Your #Palestine remains luminous. 🇵🇸🕊️
"If we had a keen vision and feeling for all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel’s heartbeat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence.” —George Eliot
I remind myself: when the Muse is silent to profess ignorance, await further instructions. Spiritually, I try and remember that (seemingly) fallow periods are when our souls are quietly being rewritten and readied for fresh utterance. Everything is not within our hands; we must Trust & wait...
'If you don’t break your ropes while you’re alive, do you think ghosts will do it after? ... Kabir says this: When the Guest is being searched for it is the intensity of the longing for the Guest that does all the work.' Version by Robert Bly, in The Kabir Book
'It may be that when we no longer know what to do we have come to our real work and that when we no longer know which way to go we have begun our real journey. The mind that is not baffled is not employed. The impeded stream is the one that sings.' —Wendell Berry
"It doesn’t matter whether he knows what he serves: who serves best doesn’t always understand." —Czeslaw Milosz
A powerful letter, by Nick Cave, on God, Love, Heartbreak, Beauty & Silence 🙏🏼
Poetry will save me. I won't tell this to the four winds, because I'm frightened of experts, excommunication, afraid of shocking the fainthearted. But not of God. What is poetry, if not His face touched by the brutality of things? — Adélia Prado
Why do you argue about that of which you have no knowledge? And Allah knows, while you know not. —Yaseen 36:67 Quran
Reported by Abu Sa`id and Abu Hurairah (RA): The Prophet said: "Never a believer is stricken with a discomfort, an illness, an anxiety, a grief or mental worry or even the pricking of a thorn but Allah will expiate his sins on account of his patience". —Bukhari
“Be steadfast, enjoin kindness, avoid ignorance, and bear with patience whatever befalls you.” —Quran 31:17
As with any wild animal, it's unwise to turn our back to life.
"Young Existentialist. He was living in the present tensely. He was living tightly against his own skin." By miniaturist Lori Ellison
