DEATH BY STONING
early morning star
are you here with
your star-gaze gone?
little wren
are you staying in the rocks
when you go to the skies?
tiny silver coin
are you coming up heads
when you collapse to tails?
my always-greening pine
is it winter when it\'s spring
will you tell me
your sisters are here
and your brother too
and I am here but
where are you?
where
are you?
why don\'t you?
why don\'t you
come and see
the red little shoe I am knitting
for the
apple of my closing eye?
and from the petals
of my heart
the red little shift
I am making
and from his deepest bones
the cradle that your brother\'s
shaping
baby roe deer, just
for you
and from their hair
pillows that your
weaving sisters
make
everyone today is looking at me kindly
they are looking at me with coloured eyes
and their shy withheld charities
are killing me and are
making me
break
little baby roe
deer
everyone is here excepting you
who the flower meadows of my broken
mind are craving
and I want to make of my holding
arms a hunter\'s pit
for you
so you would never
ever leave
your mother
what am I saying
little baby roe deer
I don\'t want anything, anything
at all
I want you to always be free and to go
wherever you will
to sit by with whoever you choose
my free-flying bird,
my up-startled
baby roe deer of the white and
running feet
everyone is here
everyone, but who
I do not want
to see
but who I do not
want : no one
not anyone,
excepting you,
only you
I want to see
who is not here
why doesn\'t anyone say anything
any more
why is no-one talking at all to me
such silences are sharp needles
to bite me
and to knife me through my heart
such silence is
the deepest scar
of my body
and you are not coming
and the sadness
is a cloudburst
valley-flooding
me
and I am not a scaffold to be toppled
not a felled tree to be sunk in the flood
I am only a bag of bones and skin
smashed about
and the only thing left of me is the tiny
scared beast of my heart
that quite simply
does not believe
that this flood
has taken you
and look
this is the sun shining
and this the white lily you used
to pour away its water
and this the red little fish
that last night a neighbour\'s
cat broke the bowl
of
that I wish is no harsh omen
and this the small flower-edged scarf
you bought for me last
New Year
and this your notebook
that always was half
open
and when I was closing it
a star jerked out
and pierced the throat
of my speech
and the word-route of my inspiration
closed up forever
last night wolves were howling
I heard their voices
last night
they brought me your torn clothes
the blue shirt your auntie made you
I wish her dear hand had been
broken
your blue shirt is red with blood
and I cannot make out its print
or pattern
they said their skirts were filled with stones
their hands were full of stones, their skirts
everywhere stones were being rained down
the world was become a world
of stone
I wish
I wish
I wish
your mother were dead
I wish I were
your sisters\' skirts
are full with blood
your brother is burning
the cradle of wood, can\'t you
smell the smoke ?
look, I am not
scared any more
the wolf of my fear is hunted
by the tiger
of my venom
and I\'ve become a fire monster
if I open up my mouth
the whole earth will
burst
I was the out-breath
you were the in
now these words are only words
now my breathing
is hardly half-done
out
there
out
of me
out
where
there is no inspiration of reply
there is no in reply
there is no
because you are not here now
and because you will
never now
come
I know
and everything
like my breathing
will stay half-done
and will stay like that
until the earth brings you
if ever back to
the fullness
of my arms
[tr. Stephen Watts & Ziba Karbassi]
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