Cathedral of Death

04-21 El Ouazzani
Hassan El Ouazzani
Moroccan
b. 1970

 

I’m not concerned with the bloodiest wars of the world
I’m not bound to its decline towards the silliest of its abysses
Battle-fronts, public interests, the peaceful histories
of nations, killers of Jesus Christ, the right wing, its extreme
the north, its nearest side.

Concerned am I
with the primordial matter of darkness, the exiles of clay
descending from the dynasties of fools, the dwellers of the underground halls
where the river is my sleeping place, the seven skies prayer-rugs
to my sinful soul, and women are shadows to some lust,
or the groaning of a fighter dying close to his military equipment,
his hand on his heart
and his eyes bulging
out of his cheeks.

The Athenian boy in person,
the boy climbing the stairs of betrayal, the grandson of Father Kairos,
discovered at once that wisdom is the refuse of the mills of stupidity,
that the horizon is narrower than the gate of Troy,
and that nothing deserves dying for,
far away from the perfume of Venus,
closer to the mirage of victory

He, then, wished
he had extra breath
to wed his burnished sword to fire, and roam
the earth. His guide the astrolabe of desire
and lust his refuge.

And wished
the heart broadened a little
to contain Aphrodite’s splendor
that is close to the borders of extreme drunkenness.

And wished
God gave him the earth as a present so that the islands of language
become his own moons, and he become the Lord. To him
letters and the howdah of meaning bow.
To him the windmills appear.

And when
he realized that death is the chant of the moment
he put fire in his coffin and mounted
the cloud of his exhausted heart.

The Athenian boy in person, the runaway of the Acropolis
The boy whose footsteps I pursue, the ever-travelling boy.
His shadow became a cloud of questions.

 

Translation by Amina Jamal Eddine and Mohamed Bouya 

Meeting the Prophetess

We present this work in honor of Dr. Ambdekar Jayanti.

04-14 Meena
Meena Kandasami
Indian
b. 1984

 

Leave your books behind.

Since memory,
Like knowledge, is a traitor,
Erase every hoarding of your horrible past.

At last, when you enter her world
Of fraying edges and falling angels
Don’t barter words where touch will do and be the truth.
For once allow her silence to sear, strip your life-layers
Because she who knows the truth will not know the tale.

Wonderlessland

We present this work in honor of Malvinas Day.

04-02 Cucurto
Washington Cucurto
Argentine
b. 1973

This morning I woke up saddened.
This land can’t give any Wonder.
Is it impossible for this Insanityland to grow
a little bit (a little green corner) of Wonder?
This land is sadder than a woman asking for sugar.
This morning I woke up downright depressed.
And I have 35 reasons.
Someone has to be guilty of planting
the bombs around this Wonderlessland.
Without poetry readers these bombs are invisible,
they don’t make noise, don’t cause panic.
These are perfect bombs that kill soundlessly.
These are the modern bombs that man invented,
they kill like falling leaves.
But leaves in the forest, they aren’t, falling
are bombs. In the cities, every day,
every hour, and people think that it’s winter arriving.
Why would they plant so many bombs in this Wonderlessland
and in so many countries like this one, Wonderless.
Is it that they are filled with wonder seeing
how their bombs explode over our houses, on the heads
of our children, onto our beds and tables; our chairs become matches.
And what will happen to the people of this Land
who don’t react? The people of this land are living in the bombs’
ruins and don’t react and don’t even try
to wake up sad, at the very least, like I do,
this January morning.
You go out onto the street and no one hears the bombs,
they don’t see the mutilated children wrapped in the aura
of their own pain, I don’t know if no one sees
them or hears them or if they don’t want to see
or listen. These are the modern bombs that humanity
has invented, bombs against hearing, against listening.
Bombs that destroy everything with the greatest
possible sensibility and diplomacy.
Peaceful bombs that burn, mutilate, uproot the tree trunks
and turn the butterflies from Patagonia’s Eden of dreams
into wild monsters.
They invented their silent pacifist
bombs that day after day they shoot at us with their
missile launchers and no one hears, or sees, or feels anything.
This is Insanityland, no Wonder
no green, no red kiss, no flow
of children across a field, this
is the land of total destruction,
of catastrophe approaching all that is possible.
I go into the street and scream:
Hey, you! Hey, you! Hey you, Dominicanne!
But no one hears or sees or feels anything,
I go through the streets and the bars and all
the hang outs showing people a mutilated
child and they don’t see him, they don’t see him.
Don’t you see this child who I have by the hand?
I say to some friendly beer drinkers
at a downtown bar.
Where? Where? they say, and keep drinking.
The world is a beerzy lane.
I prefer to think that nobody hears anything
because the noise from bombings across the land
doesn’t let them think.

Geometry of the Woman

03-28-22 Corriols
Marianela Corriols
Nicaraguan
b. 1965

 

I am a woman
Round as the universe
A pyramid that ignores its secrets
Triangular in some parts
with perfect and calculable hypotenuses
on any one of its sides.

I am a woman
Square and stubborn
when it’s about you
Pentagonal when I plan
the most secret of my weapons

I am a woman
Lineal
the shortest distance
between your all and my nothing

I am a woman
point
perhaps of your references

 

Translation by Nicolás Suescún

Without a Place

We present this work in honor of Bihar Divas.

03-22 Anamika
Anamika
Indian
b. 1961

 

This is how the shloka goes —
women, nails and hair
once they’ve fallen
just can’t be put back in place
said our Sanskrit teacher.

Frozen in place out of fear
we girls held on tight to our seats.
Place, what is this ‘place’?
We were shown our place
in the first grade.
We remembered our elementary school lessons
Ram, go to school, son,
Radha, go and cook pakora!
Ram, sip sugar syrup,
Radha, bring your broom!
Ram, bedtime, school tomorrow
Radha, go and make the bed for brother.
Aha! This is your new house
Look Ram! Here’s your room
“And mine?”
Oh, little loony!
Girls are wind, the sun and the good earth
They have no homes
“Those who don’t have a home,
where do they belong?”

Which is the place from where we fall
become clipped nails, fallen hair trapped in combs,
fit only to be swept away
Houses left behind, paths left behind
people were left behind
questions chasing us, too left behind
Leaving behind tradition,
it seems to me I’m as out of context
as a short line
from a great classic
scribbled on a BA examination paper

But I don’t want
somebody to sit down and
analyse me
to pigeonhole me
At long last, beyond all contexts
with real difficulty
I’ve gotten here

Let me be hummed
like an abhang,
unfinished.

 

Translation by Arlene Zide

Old Photographs

03-19 Baderoon
Gabeba Baderoon
South African
b. 1969

On my desk is a photograph of you
taken by the woman who loved you then.

In some photos her shadow falls
in the foreground. In this one,
her body is not that far from yours.

Did you hold your head that way
because she loved it?

She is not invisible, not
my enemy,
nor even the past.
I think
I love the things she loved.

Of all your old photographs, I wanted
this one for its becoming. I think
you were starting
to turn your head a little,
your eyes looking slightly to the side.

Was this the beginning of leaving?

The Good Soldier

In honor of Canberra Day, we present this work by one of contemporary Australia’s most notable poets.

03-14 Mansell
Chris Mansell
Australian
b. 1953

On someone else’s place
it seems to him the land
slings distance way out
the dirt is dead and
the sky seems twisted
the beat of the stones is wrong
he doesn’t know how to say it
there are no words no opportunity
and anyway
what would you say
that you’re a stranger
and this doesn’t say it at all

he walks with his weapon through the town
and from time to time he sees the luscious curl
of intimacy the uncommon common life
it’s dressed differently he can’t understand
the language rasping and gargling
another time he’d be an interested tourist
now he’s a hunter and the hunted

soon they say
he’ll be freed to retreat home
where the earth is vein deep
and when he puts his hand on the ground
he’ll feel it beating but now
he can’t remember home
though he knows the words well enough
back paddock Steve’s paddock the yard
it’s just words but now the imam calls
and winds a veil around his senses
and sometimes he thinks he’ll never
get back to where he belonged

Camouflage Costumes

03-10 Moussavi
Granaz Moussavi
Persian
b. 1976

 

The clamor of dusty children
changes in the throats of flutes.
For the children in narrow alleys, a gun
is two fingers put together,
and death
is closing of eyelids and rolling around in dirt.
Tomorrow
imaginary guns shall be left and forgotten
on the decks of paper boats,
and the camouflage costumes, once too large for the world’s children
shall fit.

 

Translation by Sholeh Wolpé 

The Cloister of Bones

03-04 Ni Cuilleanain
Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin
Irish
b. 1942

I begin from the highest point,
Best of all a belltower.

I see the tops of heads, cobbles,
Terraces all scuttling down
As if they hunted something buried
Between ledges where tables are set in the morning,
Under plants that grow over walls and pergolas,
The slopes of sheds, the stashed pruning-shears,
Under the measured walk of cats.

I am searching for a shape, a den, watching
For the cloistering blank of a street wall,
A dark reticence of windows
Banked over an inner court,
Especially rooves, arched and bouncing
Naves; a corseted apse,
And always, even if the chapel sinks
Deep inside, lit from a common well,
I search for hints of doors inside doors,
A built-in waiting about
Of threshold and washed floors,
An avid presence demanding flowers and hush.

If I guess right I hope for
A runner of garden, the right length
For taking a prayerbook for a walk,
A small stitching of cemetery ground,
Strict festivals, an hour for the tremble
Of women’s laughter, corners for mile-high panics:

And to find the meaning of the women’s Christmas.