Wednesday, March 15
MONA KAREEM
A moment of silence
to honor the soul of Mr. Juan Miró.
A moment of silence
for the bandit who loots music.
We love this old man
whose words clamber up our arms–
who does not quit his babble.
The angels of my eyes
perform their final prayer.
The wooden Trojan horse
commits suicide
in the inkwell of my blood.
Now my blood pressure rises
in the span of seven poems.
Now I turn down the music.
We have a manuscript leaning over
the balcony of stars.
We have poets wreathing the poem’s waist
with tin.
The temperature:
a million degrees beyond light.
We will be buried in memory’s corpse,
reconfiguring the cosmos.
The world trembles
in the lands of our wrecking.
Where has Mona Kareem gone,
among the swarm of friends?
Where has she run off to,
after she had shaped the cosmos
exactly the way she wanted?
Could she be in the non-place,
or will she scatter with the poem?
Perhaps she has gone looking for Mona Kareem!
(Mona Kareem,
translated from Arabic by Sara Elkamel)