Poetry
ON THIS PAGE, YOU CAN READ MORE OF MY POETRY.
The cage hanging in the house
House is on a street
The street is in the world
What a big prison, I breathe!
after rain
Misty perfume of mint along
the creek’s edge
The heady bouquet of jasmine every night
When it’s time to flee
which one of these should I stuff
in my bundle so that in fate’s crooked road
I do not lose my country.
A page from the Kabul River diary:
Forty years,
blood,
fire,
and now this…
the body of this woman
disintegrating in me.
I am sick of flowing.
Afghanistan isn’t farkhondeh anymore.
You said, tell me of the miracle of words, you said
I became a stream of speech for you of words from the beginning.
That in the beginning was the word and the word was the beginning.
But I knew nothing
of the end
of becoming nothing
of being nothing.
I said, how can I write your non-existence?
I spit myself onto a page
a painting that sent
the alphabet to its death.
In this way a thousand-and-nothing ancestors of a generation of nothing-becomers
face ruin.
Your scandal
or mine?
And existence is everything that from the beginning
was my likeness the painting
was the likeness of my painting
that wrote nothing more.
And the word null
and the word dust
s
and the word superfluous.
No letters in the post office Thursdays and Fridays.
For me, the world is always on a break.
My lamp does not burn late into night.
No one asks for me.
No one walks past my window.
I leave a café on Fifth street
and look for home.
Look for myself.
I don’t remember my address.
The more I search the more lost I become.
No one is familiar.
I try to speak in another tongue
in my Herat accent, but my voice breaks
like the last glass of wine, I drank.
The last sip is always bitter
like a letter that never arrives,
like exile,
in Berlin, Moscow, and Rotterdam,
in Tehran, and Washington DC.
Pieces of me do not return to me.
I do not return to a home no longer there.
and dawn’s blood has dried up in tomorrow’s veins.
I cry in all time zones.
Which one are you in?
You who do not hear our voices?
Free people of the world,
you who have embodied liberty in a statue,
a stone,
a rock that has fallen into a well
and is dying with its own final sound.
After a fall, if you hear a thud,
it’s the sound of death.
Pull back your clocks by a century
so, you can swallow the news of the liberty rock
with you bitter coffee and forget
that we, on this side of time,
in this side of the world
have already died in our own timeline.
2021
when Mother wrapped our country
into her bundle and abandoned her own self
so that my naval would not be tied
to the rope of war…
But
our nightly meals became
the hourly news of war.
Our cells recognized their
own exile in our suffering,
pain and wounds.
We had never traveled before,
but at age nine
I learned
the absurdity of geography.
At fourteen I untied mother’s bundle.
Its aroma enfolded me,
returned me
to my forefathers.
Now, my country is not
just the news of war; it is a madness
of geography that courses through my veins.
It’s a two-edged blade:
Death and Death.
war’s geography calls you
to arms.
The enemy has no signs,
counter-signs,
colors
signals
symbols!
Load poems like guns —
each moment is loaded with
bombs
bullets
blasts
death-sounds —
death and war
don’t follow rules
you can make your pages into white flags
a thousand times
but swallow your words,
say no more.
Load your poems —
your body —
your thoughts —
like guns.
The schoolhouses of war rise up
within you.
Maybe you
are next.
Last night in the streets someone put God up for sale
on a vendor’s cart.
Prospective buyers came by as she called,
Buy God, Buy God,
spread his fragrance everywhere.
That’s what the girl who sold God said.
The city is filled with secular trees,
monkeys who speak with accents of women and trees.
People here sow fortunes they don’t have
for love;
their blithe smiles drunk
on happiness all night.
My hair has breathed as long as my days.
Here, even the sun’s slaps are pleasant
and I have reconciled with bright colors:
reds
yellows
greens.
My hue is a hopeful white,
my democratic thoughts having forgotten that this
Is a town where people fall in love with the smell of both
poverty and ginger.
2010
Своё сердце доверю дорогам скитаний…
И два мира омою слезами страданий.
Пусть я плачу, но твёрдой рукой
Путь закрою к возврату свиданий.
Ухожу, чтобы в горе себя позабыть,
Сердце, душу свяжу я без громких стенаний.
В мир опасный пойду я навстречу мечте,
Но не буду искать для себя оправданий.
Я из сердца уставшего вырву тебя,
Плотно двери закрыв от твоих притязаний.
2008 год
पिँजडामा थुनिएको चरा/घरभित्र झुन्डिएको पिँजडा/सडकछेउमा घर/घर यो विश्व जगत्मा/अहो, कत्रो ठूलो जेलखानमा/म सास फेरिरहेकी छु !’
targeted his heart
but all he could think
of was the kohl
around his lover’s eyes
cascading in his absence on her fate.
Somaia Ramish
Translation by Soleh Wolpe