Skip to main content
Outdated Browser

For the best experience using our website, we recommend upgrading your browser to a newer version or switching to a supported browser.

More Information

Poetry

God, the mother claimed, is behind every tree in the forest

By Vénus Khoury-Ghata
Translated from French by Marilyn Hacker
his right shoulder lower than his left
heavy with rocky snowfalls from such endurance
It’s his motionless breath that fissures our walls in the night when one winter hand
   power over to another
The deaf bluetit’s wing-beats count for nothing
nor the mother’s invectives guilty of having grouted the tiles with her tears
Yet the storm announced festive disorder
erosion polished up by subtle windsEverything smiled at us
and the mother who wore her tears around her neck like warm-sea pearls
counted them on our fingers that grew with the Persian lilac, the only one to
   sympathize with our sorrows
 
© Vénus Khoury-Ghata. By arrangement with the author. Translation  © 2012 by Marilyn Hacker. All rights reserved. 
English French (Original)
his right shoulder lower than his left
heavy with rocky snowfalls from such endurance
It’s his motionless breath that fissures our walls in the night when one winter hand
   power over to another
The deaf bluetit’s wing-beats count for nothing
nor the mother’s invectives guilty of having grouted the tiles with her tears
Yet the storm announced festive disorder
erosion polished up by subtle windsEverything smiled at us
and the mother who wore her tears around her neck like warm-sea pearls
counted them on our fingers that grew with the Persian lilac, the only one to
   sympathize with our sorrows
 
© Vénus Khoury-Ghata. By arrangement with the author. Translation  © 2012 by Marilyn Hacker. All rights reserved. 

Dieu, clamait la mère, se tient derrière tous les arbres de la forêt

Dieu, clamait la mère, se tient derrière tous les arbres de la forêt
L’epaule droite plus basse que la gauche
     lourde de neiges pierreuses à force d’endurance
C’est son souffle immobile qui fissura nos murs la nuit de passation entre deux hivers
Les battements d’ailes de la mésange sourde ne jouaient aucun rôle
ni les invectives de la mère coupable d’avoir cimenté les tuiles avec ses larmes

Pourtant la tempête annonçait des désordres festifs
Des dégradations fignolées par vents subtils
Tout nous souriait
Et la mère qui portait ses larmes autour du cou telles perles des mers chaudes
Les comptait sur nos doigts qui grandissaient avec la Lilas de Perse
     Le seul à compatir à nos malheurs

Read Next

february-2008-worth-ten-thousand-words-a-world-of-graphics-part-ii-from-metro-magdy-el-shafee-hero