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  • When evening comes, and: Crouching on his hunger, and: The ones who burn snow, and: Red of leaves and foxes, and: Keep moving, and: Not guard or night watchman
  • Vénus Khoury-Ghata (bio)
    Translated by Marilyn Hacker (bio)

When evening comesshe gathers his footsteps scattered across all the roomsrecreates him with his smile in his buttonhole and that jacket he wore as    bridegroom and corpse thenonce again counts his strides that end up in the same bed

Begone!the Darkened Ones who hold him back against his willthe crumbs of their last meal are swept up with the horned ants

let him set his feet again on the four-knot ruglet him find his place in the crook of his own shoulderlet him listen to her tell contradictory versions of her consolations    without interrupting herwhen she describes her rage washing the walls and the lenses of his    glasses to see how he saw her

the tree with a view of her mirror can't keep from laughingher mourning can't be compared with its distress after its branches are    trimmed

her house seen from outside is uninhabitednebulous silhouettes of unloved loverspass each other without touchingwithout exchanging a wordseek a book an embrace in the rumpling of sheetsrepeat the trip from doorway to bedshe counts them on her fingersmultiplies them by the speed of their steps [End Page 25] same faces same fear when they turn to see if they are being followedelusive the bed the woman and her possessions

they leave with their heads bowedthe spaces between the lines witness to their disappearance

________

for Jean-Pierre Siméon

Crouching on his hungerthe wolf drools when the woman plucks chickens with her skirt pulled up    over her thighsHe knows her from late autumn when she rode the mule barebackthe beast's rough hair calmed her blood

God of wolves, she cries, head thrown back as if she were howlingwhy didn't you give the tree feathersand the chickens branchesand a cord to the goat carried off in a squall

cord tied to the goatgoat tied to the treetree tied to its shadow on the wall when evening erases the wall

only the lime tree is freeits odor drives away mosquitoes and the dead who proliferate in stagnant    water

insomniac treeso much anguish silenced in your branches

________

The ones who burn snow live on the bald side of the mountaintheir white smoke slips under our doors [End Page 26] with what cold do they set their stockpots boiling?how can you believe them when their coats were emptyand they had neither a knife to cut breadnor a stick to stun chickens and they misplaced the name of the one who knew

when you die it's for life they sayyou become the last thing you sawit's there in the books

________

Red of leaves and foxesblack of clothes hung up high to keep the dead from dressing in themthe pencil behind the ear of the carpenter unclenoted the measurementssame width for the shoulders and the co≈nthe birdlime simmering in the pot annoyed the hollyhocks but enticed    the copper-backed grasshopperprisoner in a matchboxshe fed on her own rage

pebble sticks toys of another erathe pebble cracked the sleep of the woman with the milky bellythe stick made the donkey and the recalcitrant sun keep moving

our poverty overflowed with amazing riches

________

For May Menassa

Keep moving,there's nothing here to seethe one you're searching for between these pages has settled into the dust    of words and the last sentence rubbed with ashesthe way her mother polished copper [End Page 27] leave before the house falls to bits, and the heart sewn up after every    defeatevery disillusion

what is my name, she asks the walls bent over you

her name of water and sea-foam the height of a schoolchild's pencilher name so small it takes frightwhat fingers...

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