Venice masks

Tuesday 10 November 2020

Aséna - Tahir Hamut Izgil

A piece of my flesh
torn away.
A piece of my bone
broken off.
A piece of my soul
remade.
A piece of my thought
set free.

In her thin hands
the lines of time grow long.
In her black eyes
float the truths of stone tablets.
Round her slender neck
a dusky hair lies knotted.
On her dark skin
the map of fruit is drawn.

She
is a raindrop on my cheek, translucent
as the future I can’t see.

She
is a knot that need not to be untied
like the formula my blood traced from the sky,
an omen trickling from history.

She
kisses the stone on my grave
that holds down my corpse
and entrusts me to it.

She
is a luckless spell
who made me a creator
and carried on my creation.

She is my daughter.

Tahir Hamut Izgil (born 1969) China
Translated by Joshua Freeman
Source: pen / opp

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