and knead the dough enough for dozens of loavesof which you’ll taste not a morsel;you are free to slave for others–you are free to make the rich richer.The moment you’re bornthey plant around youmills that grind lieslies to last you a lifetime.You keep thinking in your great freedoma finger on your templefree to have a…
I heard this song from his friends,one lurid yellow evening on the Pacific.Those who eat the fish we caught, die.Those who touch our hands, die,This ship is a black coffin,you’ll die if you come up the gangplank.Those who eat the fish we caught, die,not straight away, but slowly,slowly their flesh rots, falls off.Those who eat…
my mother, the most beautiful of all.You are on the carousel of the festival inside meyou hover around, your skirt and your hair flyingMere seconds between finding your beautiful face and losing it.What is the reason,why do I remember you like a wound on my heartwhat is the reason that I hear your voice when…
with my fingernail.Where I am, you know,I don’t have a pearl-handled jackknife(they won’t give me anything sharp)or a plane tree with its head in the clouds.Trees may grow in the yard,but I’m not allowedto see the sky overhead…How many others are in this place?I don’t know.I’m alone far from them,they’re all together far from me.To…
Mary is one mother among many mothers.Mary gave birth to a son,a son among many sons.That’s why Mary is so beautiful in all the pictures of her.That’s why Mary’s son is so close to us, like our own sons.The faces of our women are the book of our pains.Our pains, our faults and the blood…
I don’t like to turn backat three I served as a pasha’s grandson in Aleppoat nineteen as a student at Moscow Communist Universityat forty-nine I was back in Moscow as the Tcheka Party’s guestand I’ve been a poet since I was fourteensome people know all about plants some about fishI know separationsome people know the…
Suddenly something stirred on the ground.The trees are whisperingin the dark.Your bare arms will be cold.Far offwhere we can’t see,the moon must be rising.It hasn’t reached us yet,slipping through the leavesto light up your shoulder.But I knowa wind comes up with the moon.The trees are whispering.Your bare arms will be cold.From above,from the branches lost…
At home.Still unaccustomed-awake or sleeping-to being in your own home.This is just one more of the stupefactionsof spending thirteen years in a prison.Who’s lying at your side?Not loneliness, but your wife,in the peaceful sleep of an angel.Pregnancy looks good on a woman.What time is it?Eight.That means you’re safe until evening.Because it’s the practice of policeNever…
neither riches no real-estate —a pot of honey is all I own.A pot of honeyred as fire!My honey is my everything.I guardmy riches and my real-estate— my honey pot, I mean —from pests of every species,Brother, just wait…As long as I’ve gothoney in my pot,bees will come to itfrom Timbuktu…Trans. by Mutlu Konuk and Randy…
or lock beetles in matchboxesor stomp anthillshe grew upand all those things were done to himI was at his bedside when he diedhe said read me a poemabout the sun and the seaabout nuclear reactors and satellitesabout the greatness of humanity
