Aug 1, 2017

The Room of Darkness



la nuit seule dans ma voix 
— Jean Senac
I am from darkness,
my homeland is an aging butterfly
my prayers are the desert.
*
I wash in rain’s spit,
in my prayers the sun
dances tip-toe.
*
My god on the brink of a death.
He the echo’s infra-violet.
He is a storm
that loves to talk.
*
I was born with a genetic defect,
one of twins: I
and solitude.
I shall give you all a sad heart,
a burst eye, a foot
with twenty toes
and other limbs left me
by my friend Time.
*

My father budded between sheets
of pouring rain, between
two moments of silence
from the widowed sky.
When I accepted him as a father
he made me paper angels
that I can beat easy
at hide-and-seek.
*
My father was the first volcano on earth
and our balcony axis of the swirling rain
at the beginning of a feast day.
Our balcony was a rowboat of tears
sometimes sunk in childish clamour.
Our balcony: a life that left  the city
and settled in a tub of imagination


In our new home
there is no balcony
*
I saw new accessories
worn by the earth
and I saw houses shed their doors
to disassociate themselves
from loved ones parting.
*
I saw cities abandon their inhabitants,
the train lines creaking
on their back
and weeping the river to bid farewell.
*
I feel blood vagrant
in my veins
I feel washrooms playing cards
atop my lighthouse head.
*
Words need someone
to scrub them with soap,
need looser clothes
and a stranger who won’t demand they smile.
*
In light
I see the darkness I see my god
I see time
I see you

but I don't see me. 

* Translated by Robin Moger, for Modern Poetry in Translation

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