Female Poets

The Forest of Deceptions

In honor of Moroccan Independence Day, we offer this work by one of today’s most independent Morrocan poets.

Ouidad Benmoussa
Moroccan
b. 1969

 

1

There were countless deceptions in the notebook of life:
A radio transmits news of war while a hand raises the white flag
Dead people issue from dreams
Blood oozes out of the body of desire…
A distant house that you climb to from an angle watched over by the river… Deceptive it is
A reception room with a table in the middle, on which drunken poems sleep… Deceptive they are
A white curtain, from which light creeps in and assaults love’s posture… Deceptive light
A kitchen, from which you cross to the hugging space within the books’ view… Deceptive books
A bedroom, with sensual butterflies keeping vigil on every side pleasure… Deceptive vigil
A pair of pillows, a pair of witnesses, bawdy, reporting news of orgasms to the bedsheets which are jealous… Deceptive orgasms
A lamp, that lights up only when the body is extinguished… Deceptive it is
An undesirable morning… coming speedy and reminding of ablution rites… A deceptive morning
Deceptions… deceptions

2

Even shoes in the wardrobe spotted countless deceptions
Cockroaches wandering in the bathroom hall reported news of deception on the phone
On the T-shirt
On the blanket
In the jacket pocket
Deceptions without smell but suffocating
Deceptions on walls
On paint
On paper napkins
On the necktie
Deceptions in the window crack, from which emerges an eye flirting with another eye on the other side
Deceptions in greetings
Deceptions under the shower
In entreaties
In high-walled separation
In cities
In monasteries
In the waiting rooms of Heaven and Hell
Deceptions all along the difficult path
Towering deceptions
Wild
Reckless
Pervading the city, the neighborhood, the building gate, apartments, ghosts that that haunt apartments
Deceptions leaking from gas pipes
From balconies overlooking roses, wheat, cactus, oleander flowers and black plastic bags
Leaking from palliative medicine boxes
Night clubs, matchboxes, tomato cans, packets of cigarettes and black boxes in booby-trapped planes
Deceptions skating on ice
Dancing on the heart stage
Demonstrating out in the street, and running for presidential elections
Raising slogans with the unemployed, although they hold the highest offices
Voracious deceptions, chewing the destinies of lovers and the weak
And crushing chickpeas and roasted almonds with their teeth in the love street
Deceptions trampling heart after heart
Suppressing passion after passion
And spreading in all parts of the mind fomenting more treachery… more discord…
And I upon the rubble of deceptions
Waving a scythe and a sword
A wound and a hemorrhage
Songs and music
I will deceive:
My face in the mirror
My body on the death bed
My time woven with error threads
I’ll deceive my joy and laugh loudly out of excessive pain
I’ll deceive the faces of those I loved with a slap of forgetting
I’ll deceive those who loved me by adding them to the list of the Mughal war victims
Those who betrayed me by dropping them into an electric wheat mill
Those who suffocated me with love palpitations, by dragging them into an abyss over there
I’ll deceive the world with a hard shoe blow on the head, till blood gushes as from a geyser… the blood of the world
I’ll deceive life with her lover death
I’ll deceive myself with anxiety
I’ll deceive the sky by breaking through the ozone hole
I’ll deceive monsters in the jungle of my imagination with poetry angels
I’ll deceive my step with a backward step
I’ll deceive the back with the front
I’ll deceive the front with the invisible
I’ll deceive the invisible with indifference
And laugh
Laugh
And join the Forest… in my full elegance
And at the gate – the forest gate –
I’ll wear my high heels
So as not to disturb sparrows:
The foremost deceivers.

The Mermaid’s Gift of Prophecy

Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill
Irish
b. 1952

 

1.There’s some idea at the back of her mind she just can’t put into words. ‘That young fellow out there—I don’t seem to be able to recall his name—he’s—he’s— (a small break here while her hand shakes) he’s in a dark place.’

2. Who does she mean? My son? My husband? Or some other member of the family? Or is she, at some other level, referring to herself?

3. She was always deep.
But now she seems to be talking up to us
from a bottomless well.

Light

Margaret Tait
Scots
1918 – 1999

 

Did you say it’s made of waves?
Yes, that’s it.
I wonder what the waves are made of.
Oh, waves are made of waves.
Waves are what they are,
Shimmeringness,
Oscillation,
Rhythmical movement which is the inherent essence of all things.
Ultimately, there’s only movement,
Nothing else.
The movement that light is
Comes out of the sun
And it’s so gorgeous a thing
That nothing else is ever anything unless lit by it.

The Friends I Loved and Left Behind

In honor of the Chilean holiday, Reformation Day, we present this work by one of modern Chile’s most visionary authors.

Mariela Griffor
Chilean
b. 1961

 

After Elizabeth Bishop

A farewell to a dear friend is never enough.
We must bring him flowers, songs with
spinning words and good wishes.
We must bring a shadowy thought
of love that make us both happy.

We must convince the ghost that dances
around his grave to be kind to our friend.
He did so much.
He did plant a tree and had a son.
He did in part save his country.

The worst time, I thought, was to leave
one of the friends behind,
there in the dried mountain
his heart was destroyed, his eyes open.
How can we write poems after that?

The friends I loved and left made signs
with their fingers in the fading skies.
They left me here in a brown earth
so I can weep a red spot that leads
to a hollow moon faced to the sky.

Ode to a Whore

In honor of Diwali, we present this work by one of contemporary India’s most visionary poets.

Mamoni Raisom Goswani
Indian
1942 – 2011

 

People say that
I excel in making wine.
I can turn the wine
which is brewed today
a hundred years old.
It can make people frenzied and wild
wine that I brew, drinking
I too am constantly intoxicated.

My fleshy breasts
Now sleeps like a dead river.
Intoxicated.
I now can turn this river into a sharp weapon.

The wine I brew
knows how to make
songs from stone, songs from ashes.
People despair to discover my mystery,
they smash their heads
against walls, iron pillars.
They scream, Ah! What is this boon
the heavens bestow upon her path.
How do I say
the way I have brewed
this mellow wine?
I have lain fainted
In the dark hall of sorrow!
In agony
I have whipped my own flesh
and have drunk my own blood.
I couldn’t
take off my clothes
in front of my lovers.
And I had a hundred lovers.
yet, I remained a virgin.

The women from the other
Bank of the river, scream
You are a sinner
You will earn a leper’s death!

My body, which is like
the supple bodies of barali-fish
that dance with the waves of the Red River!
My breasts—the Saramati Peak
in the Tuensang valley.
My mekhela is like
those branches of Rhododendron
which bloom in the Satoi Ranges!

The women from the
other bank of the river –
spit their venom
Oh hunted woman! Let your body
become a feast for
worms!

The Ladies with white hair
from the other bank of the river
Cry out with many voices!
Oh women, don’t gouge at her flesh!
Who knows, those men who
remain like your immediate shadow
would have tried the silky
skin of their own daughters!
Who knows, who knows!
Wise men say, whores are the generals
of the Wars!
Like rivers they lay their traps
Like mountains they protect
the innocent souls!
Oh women, abide by the
Songs of the monk!
Don’t gouge at the flesh of whores!
They know unknown
travelers and murky hunters!
Yes, wise men say, that whores are
the weary generals of the Wars!

My body turned into a skeleton;
my skin swung
loosely on the bones
like the hide of a beast
strung up by a butcher
on a long post
to dry!
The demon of misery
and sorrow
looking for my heart
raked my body with its nails!

Suddenly, I discovered the art of
making wine.

I could ford this
river of separation
which flows in the
guise of human life!
which has kept in its bosom
those ancient maps
of the kingdoms burnt into ashes.

Came floating the golden pitcher from the pages of Samhitas
and from the wombs of the Upanishadas
a heavenly voice cries out
Oh Lady, with the heavy breasts
Open! Open the Lid!…

Many days and many nights
I brewed wine—to open the lids of the golden pitcher
which came from the womb of the Upanishads
Alas, I failed!
drinking made me wild,
only failures drink like a fish!

Suddenly, the lid
opened.
Standing on the other side of
the river—
I saw the glittering
shards of my wine glasses
scattered in a thousand pieces.

Poor Joe

Sarah Anne Curzon
Canadian
1833 – 1898

 

He cannot dance, you say, nor sing,
Nor troll a lilting stave;
And when the rest are cracking jokes
He’s silent as the grave.

Poor Joe! I know he cannot sing—
His voice is somewhat harsh:
But he can whistle loud and clear
As plover in the marsh.

Nor does he dance, but he would walk
Long miles to serve a friend,
And though he cares not crack a joke,
He will the truth defend.

And so, though he for company
May not be much inclined,
I love poor Joe, and think his home
Will be just to my mind.

Fable

We present this work in honor of the poet’s 100th birthday.

Doris Lessing
English
1919 – 2013

 

When I look back I seem to remember singing.
Yet it was always silent in that long warm room.

Impenetrable, those walls, we thought,
Dark with ancient shields. The light
Shone on the head of a girl or young limbs
Spread carelessly. And the low voices
Rose in the silence and were lost as in water.

Yet, for all it was quiet and warm as a hand,
If one of us drew the curtains
A threaded rain blew carelessly outside.
Sometimes a wind crept, swaying the flames,
And set shadows crouching on the walls,
Or a wolf howled in the wide night outside,
And feeling our flesh chilled we drew together.

But for a while the dance went on –
That is how it seems to me now:
Slow forms moving calm through
Pools of light like gold net on the floor.
It might have gone on, dream-like, for ever.

But between one year and the next – a new wind blew?
The rain rotted the walls at last?
Wolves’ snouts came thrusting at the fallen beams?

It is so long ago.
But sometimes I remember the curtained room
And hear the far-off youthful voices singing.

The Mermaid

Anne Bannerman
Scots
1765 – 1829

 

Blow on, ye death-fraught whirlwinds! blow,
Around the rocks, and rifted caves;
Ye demons of the gulf below!
I hear you, in the troubled waves.
High on this cliff, which darkness shrouds
In night’s impenetrable clouds,
My solitary watch I keep,
And listen, while the turbid deep
Groans to the raging tempests, as they roll
Their desolating force, to thunder at the pole.

Eternal world of waters, hail!
Within thy caves my Lover lies;
And day and night alike shall fail,
Ere slumber lock my streaming eyes.
Along this wild untrodden coast,
Heap’d by the gelid hand of frost;
Thro’ this unbdounded waste of seas,
Where never sigh’d the vernal breeze;
Mine was the choice, in this terrific form,
To brave the icy surge, to shiver in the storm.

Yes! I am chang’d.—My heart, my soul,
Retain no more their former glow.
Hence, ere the black’ning tempests roll,
I watch the bark, in murmurs low,
(While darker low’rs the thick’ning gloom)
To lure the sailor to his doom;
Soft from some pile of frozen snow
I pour the syren-song of woe;
Like the sad mariner’s expiring cry,
As, faint and worn with toil, he lays him down to die.

Then, while the dark and angry deep
Hangs his huge billows high in air;
And the wild wind with awful sweep,
Howls in each fitful swell—beware!
Firm on the rent and crashing mast,
I lend new fury to the blast;
I mark each hardy cheek grow pale,
And the proud sons of courage fail;
Till the torn vessel drinks the surging waves,
Yawns the disparted main, and opes its shelving graves.

When Vengeance bears along the wave
The spell, which heav’n and earth appals;
Alone, by night, in darksome cave,
On me the gifted wizard calls.
Above the ocean’s boiling flood
Thro’ vapour glares the moon in blood:
Low sounds along the waters die,
And shrieks of anguish fill the sky;
Convulsive powers the solid rocks divide,
While, o’er the heaving surge, the embodied spirits glide.

Thrice welcome to my weary sight,
Avenging ministers of wrath!
Ye heard, amid the realms of night,
The spell that wakes the sleep of death.
Where Hecla’s flames the snows dissolve,
Or storms, the polar skies involve;
Where, o’er the tempest-beaten wreck,
The raging winds and billows break;
On the sad earth, and in the stormy sea,
All, all shall shudd’ring own your potent agency.

To aid your toils, to scatter death,
Swift, as the sheeted lightning’s force,
When the keen north-wind’s freezing breath
Spreads desolation in its course,
My soul within this icy sea,
Fulfils her fearful destiny.
Thro’ Time’s long ages I shall wait
To lead the victims to their fate;
With callous heart, to hidden rocks decoy,
And lure, in seraph-strains, unpitying, to destroy.