Athiná Papadáki
From: Earth Once Again (1986)
Womb Mother
Womb
Mother
with a white bandeau,
ancient hand
turning spinning-wheel and seeds
until
towards the final pang
veers
Pregnancy.
Unfortified kingdom. Only the water that speaks.
In the unlettered procession of the stars
the brain unmade by human hand
is theirs.
The first arrives.
Female in the whole length of her shadow
and with the kerchief of the siege
in her eyes.
Born on Thursday, the oath will say.
It will impose the stairs and the bended knee.
Lovely
she will never need
true beauty.
Second in rank
defining her place
like an artesian well.
Spas
to tame
passion,
not knowledge.
A bee,
where the tongue
searches for
a bitter taste.
The last woman
swift and double-edged
with sandals turned to Ekbatana
Spartan dust on the hem.
This sacrifice will go a long way,
which means to the far quarry
with headlights full on at the humans' bend.
A difficult road
indeterminate,
with kilometers of deepest desert from the heart to the lips.
And bear in mind,
life is a moving mountain,
all shadows and new gardens.
Afterwards,
as the great silver fish
slip from her hands
she opens the tap of the sea
amid a breathless
oxygen-free sleep.
The first cry in space
the footstep of a lioness.
Translated by Christopher Robinson
Page(s) 56-58
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