Vénus Khoury-Ghata
Five Poems from She Says
4.
She only opens her door to the winds who liberate the dead pinned to her
mirror to bury them higher up in a hole in the air
The cliff, she says, is crumbling like a poor man’s bread and it’s not those
taciturn oaks which will save the landscape’s reputation
She says too that she only has to wait for the fifth season for her dead to
come back to her honeyed tears on the apple-tree’s cheeks
They’ll straddle the fog
mount the dogs
soil the hallway
to express their disapproval
Questioning the calends complicates the route of the sun lodged in her
chicken house since the hens began laying their eggs in the river
Curses on thresholds that don’t know how to gather footsteps she repeats
till it intoxicates her
curses on hands that turn bread into grief
curses on water which changes to frost when you drink it
Her long cohabitation with the mountain taught her that birds migrate at
night so they won’t know the road is long
Translated by Marilyn Hacker
Page(s) 94-95
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