Rose Mahanor Art Blog

Now,

In June,

When the night is a vast softness

Filled with blue stars,

And broken shafts of moon-glimmer

Fall upon the earth,

Am I too old to see the fairies dance?

I cannot find them anymore.

In Africa the wine is cheap, and it is

on St. Marks Place too, beneath a white moon.

I'll go there tomorrow, dark bulk hooded

against what is hurled down at me in my no hat

which is weather:  the tall pretty girl in the print dress

under the fur collar of her cloth coat will be standing

by the wire fence where the wild flowers grow not too tall

her eyes will be deep brown and her hair styled 1941 American

will be too; but

I'll be shattered by then

But now I'm not and can also picture white clouds

impossibly high blue sky over small boy heart broken

to be dressed in black knickers, black coat, broken white shirt,

buster brown collar, flaring black tie

her hand lightly fallen on his shoulder faded sunlight falling

across the picture, mother & son, 33 & 7, Communion Day Hill

I'll go out for a drink with one of my demons tonight

they are dry in Colorado 1980 spring snow.

Although you sit in a room that is gray,

Except for the sliver

of the straw-paper

And pick

At your pale white gown

Or lift one of your green beads

 Of your necklace

To let it fall :

Or gaze at your green fan

Printed with the red branches of the red willow:

Or , with one finger,

Move the leaf in the bowl-

The leaf that has fallen from the branches of the forsythia

Beside you...

What is all this?

I know how furiously your  heart is beating.

I have walked through many lives,

some of them my own,

and I am not who I was,

though some principle of being being abides,

from which I struggle not to stray.

When I look behind,

as I am compelled to look before I can gather strength to proceed on my journey,

I see the milestones dwindling toward the horizon and the slow fires trailing from the abandoned camp sites,

over which scavenger angels wheel on heavy wings.

Oh, I have made myself a tribe out of my affections, and my tribe is scattered!

How shall the heart be reconciled to its feast of losses?

In a rising wind the manic dust of my friends, those who fell along the way, bitterly stings my face.

Yet, I turn, I turn, exulting somewhat with my will intact to go whever I need to go,

and every stone on the road precious to me.

In my darkest night when the moon was covered and I roamed through wreckage,

a nimbus clouded voice directed me: " Live in layers, not on the litter."

Though I lack the art to decipher it,

no doubt the next chapter in my book of transformations is already written.

I am not done with my changes.

Mahmoud Darwish
translated from the Arabic by Fady Joudah

SONNET [ VI ]

A pine tree in your right hand. A willow in your left. This

is summer: one of your hundred gazelles has surrendered to the dew

and slept on my shoulder, near one of your regions, and so what

if the wolf notices, and a forest burns in the distance.

Your sleepiness is stronger than fear. A wilderness of your beauty

dozes off, and a moon out of your shadows wakes to guard its trees.

What's the name of the place your footsteps tattooed on the ground,

a heavenly ground for the salaam of the birds, near echo?

And stronger than the sword is your sleep between your streamlined arms.

Like two rivers in the dreamer's paradise of what you do on the banks

to yourself carried above yourself. The wolf might carry a flute

and cry by the river: what isn't feminized . . . is in vain.

A bit of weakness in metaphor is enough for tomorrow.

For the berries to ripen on the fence, and for the sword to break under dew