Etel Adnan

the sun came out at night

to go for a stroll and the divine crossed

the room. the windows

opened

writing comes from a dialogue

with time: it’s made

of a mirror in which thought

is stripped and no longer knows

itself

in Palermo men are as

strictly trained as horses; or

else they have the shining violence of

flowers

*

it’s more bearable to think of

death than of love

Greek thought explored

all things the way it

explored the islands

when men no longer have

power over women, over whom

will they have it?

*

all Sicily is painted

by the planting

of vines

the shards of grief that a teapot

transforms into inexpressible joy

the Barbary figs ripen

on brilliant mornings, with firm flesh,

with certain steps

21

When no one is waiting for us

any longer, there’s

death,

so faithful.

22

Broken souls are not anonymous,

no more than the geometry

reserved for my naked feet.

23

There are moments when

the past ceases to be a form

of the present.

Rain and tears

Look alike.

24

Syria has always been the mother

of chaos. A land parallel to

all the others. In the epiphany

of a sun to come,

breathless.

25

The olive tree in Delphi,

next to the temple of Sikiyon,

remembers the oracle

saying that

somewhere in the plain linking

the Red Sea to the Dead Sea,

music will

displace the sky.

26

Ruins are relics.

The lineage being of little importance, we’re related to them.

those who cannot leave
discover the geography
of the body. there are also airfields
and harbors on the surface of our souls

don’t leave the Mediterranean
without telling her that you loved her:
her daughters and her sons went
North, a day of rain, or a day
of war

as for me, I belong to the stones
thrown for lack of helicopters,
to the women locked up,
to the political prisoners;
sometimes I regret my love of
splendor

but our solar mother star,
and the lunar father, in their way,
have entrusted us with useless
objects from a forgotten century

light blinds the animals. they

await the night, she is more likely their

messiah than ours

I went out to see the sea from my terrace.

it looked at me. I understood that

I mustn’t launch myself into

its fierce waves

put out your lights before going to sleep.

the sun kissed you, leaving

burns on your face. it

returned to its solitude

I’d have liked to go to the corner

café, to watch the cold file by while I’m

in the warm, or even to make love …

but bombs are raining down on Baghdad

this evening, my friends, I’m going to bed

early because the dark is too thick. I’ll try,

contrary to what’s usual in dreams, not to let

myself be carried by waves, nor hunt

for my key. I’m going to try to sleep,

I believe, as children do

there’s a time in autumn when the

trees change their nature, and

wake up beyond

matter; then one sees them come back to

their ordinary selves

my house’s stairway is seized

with vertigo.

Matter having forsaken its laws,

we land in hell,

ascending to heaven.

*

Shadows move along ladders

under the silence of ordinary things

there is another silence:

it belongs neither to the leaves nor to the

dead

with a crown of birds circling                           
him    
a child is running in an abandoned                 
house                                                
the stairway takes the measure of                  
its own emptiness                                        

I myself am the stairway that

Time has used in its

funeral course