View from Afar - Shakila Azizzada

I’m left again with no one standing behind me,
ground pulled from under my feet.
Even the sun’s shoulders are beyond my reach.

My navel chord was tied
to the apron strings of custom,
my hair first cut over a basin of edicts.
In my ear, a prayer was whispered:
‘May the earth behind and beneath you
be forever empty’.

However, just a little higher,
there’ll always be a land
purer than any land Satan could wish on me.

With the sun’s hand on my shoulder,
I tear my feet away, a thousand and one times,
from the things I leave behind me.

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Shakila Azizzada (born 1964) Afghanistan
Translated by Zuzanna Olszewska and Mimi Khalvati
Source: Poetry Translation Centre