Amina Said
Two Poems The Mothers
From now on the mothers will sleep alone
among the portraits of the dead
only the mothers know where they've gone
and how the long labour of dying
had distanced them already from the living
alone from now on the mothers wander among the graves of the departed reciting down those avenues of death prayers in unknown languages telling the heavy beads of dispersed time
they no longer measure time by nights that fall across the earth nor by mornings rising on the world they ask everyone where the territories of death begin and where they end
the mothers discover solitude
the world contained by a square of hardened earth
they keep having the same dream that cracks darkness open
converse with the emptiness of mirrors
repeat the same prayer in which daylight is dying
from now on in the rumpled sheets of time the mothers celebrate solitary weddings in the deep silence of their houses clocks without hands mark the passage of the hours
from now on night will have eyes tracking the mothers' sleeplessness two angels inhabit them who one day
VOLUME 4 | 2011 | SPECIAL ISSUE
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Amina Said
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will ask for our accounts when our turn comes to approach the doors of heaven
with the rosary's thread broken
the mothers pour the water of their tears
into the graves' crucible
they pay attention to the flight of birds
messages from the dead between their wings
our second home is built
in the avenue of death say the mothers
why have we given life
just to struggle with the shadow for it
until our own last breath
all we see of our kin is bleached bones hands soiled with graveyard earth we plant trees and bushes so those branches will be the roof of their new dwelling if only we had known say the mothers
we reread letters the dead once sent and imagine different answers everything becomes clear once it is too late there is not enough thread of regret left to string the shards of our night
our hands tremble the mothers keep saying from looking into too much darkness our eyes can barely see light the suns have deserted our gardens long rags of cloud hang from the trees
we all dance suspended like puppets with time holding the strings our movements replicate ancient gestures and from now on no one will hear our expropriated speech
IJEMS
Amina Said
what wouldn't we have done for our loved ones plucked the splinters from life's thorny bouquet then one by one the roses wilted from now on through a window frame
we will watch the sea marry the horizon	I/09]
our life a glimmer that flickers on shadow slowly we divest ourselves of our backbones hunched over further each day with the inconsequential weight of memory and with waiting for our own end.
you who are no longer in the world's present tense
but in an excess of night with hidden doorways
I create you in your own image caress your waters
we watch ourselves draw apart
and the dream shadows a never-indifferent night
then reemerges in all its weight of aerial pain
I keep you multiple
in the crucible of fecund breath
in the pollen-gathering corollas of silence
at the heart of a word made of shattered dawns
brought back to life in a prodigal day's shivering
more simply I'm taking a rest from your dream
from the suns in your eyes
it's that way with certain dreams
as with great happiness or great sorrow
for your silence lacking a voice
for the dream that you bear in your night
the flame must be fed the lamp protected
Translated from the French by Marilyn Hacker
VOLUME 4 | 2011 | SPECIAL ISSUE