In Her Feminine Sign by Dunya Mikhail

Author:Dunya Mikhail
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780811228770
Publisher: New Directions
Published: 2019-07-10T16:33:10+00:00

IV

1

I wanted to write an epic about suffering,

but when I found a tendril

of her hair among the ruins

of her mud house

I found my epic there.

2

I didn’t sleep last night.

It was as if the night

itself hid in the morning coffee.

3

Her life is a game of snakes and ladders

sent relentlessly back to square one,

but whose life isn’t like this? She takes

a breath and throws the dice again.

4

The city glitters below

the airplane window, not because

of the bones and skulls scattered

under the sun, but the view

through the frosted porthole.

5

She died, and time changed

for those she loved most,

but her watch kept ticking.

6

A god carried the burdens

until the weight persuaded him

to transfer them to man:

the new suffering god.

7

The map of Iraq looks like a mitten

and so does the map of Michigan—

a match I made by chance.

8

If you can’t save people

at least don’t hate them.

9

Her bubbling annoys me—

I can’t understand a word she says.

So what if I toss her from the aquarium?

So what if I spill her new world

with this nasty immigrant fish?

10

The city’s innumerable lights

turning on and off remind us

we are born to arrive

as we are born to leave.

11

The handkerchiefs are theirs,

but the tears are ours.

12

Women running barefoot.

Behind them, stars falling from the sky.

13

So strange

that in my dream of us

you were also a dream.

14

He said to me: You are in my eyes.

Now when he sleeps,

his eyelids cover me.

15

Gilgamesh stopped wishing

for immortality,

for only in death could he be certain

of seeing his friend Enkidu again.

16

Some say love means

putting all your eggs

in one basket.

If they all break,

can the basket remain intact?

17

The homeless are not afraid

to miss something.

The world passes before their eyes

as clouds pass over rushing cars

pigeons miss some of the seeds

on the road and step away.

Yet only the homeless know

what it means to have a home

and to return to it.

18

The wind and rain

batter us

without discrimination.

We are equal

in the eyes of the storm.

19

When I was broken into fragments

you puzzled me

back together

piece by piece.

I no longer fear

being broken

at any moment.

20

Freezing in the mountains

without blankets or food,

and all they heard was

no news is good news.

21

Their stories didn’t kill me

but I would die if I didn’t

tell them to you.

22

Before killing them

they collected their personal effects.

Their cell phones are all ringing

in the box.

23

We are not upset when

the grass dies. We know

it will come back

in a season or two.

The dead don’t come back

but they appear every time

in the greenness of the grass.

24

If yearning encircles us,

what does it mean?

That a circle has no beginning

and no end?

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