A Beloved Poem
Clipped out of a New Yorker issue a few years back. Now that I own all the back issues on CD I suppose I can find the actual publication date! Questions and maybe a few answers for all of us striving to work with words.
Words
by Venus Khoury-Ghata
Where do words come from?
from what rubbing of sounds are they born
on what flint do they light their wicks
what winds brought them into our mouths
Their past is the rustling of stifled silences
the trumpeting of molten elements
the grunting of stagnant waters
Sometimes
they grip each other with a cry
expand into lamentations
become mist on the windows of dead houses
crystallize into chips of grief on dead lips
attach themselves to a fallen star
dig their hole in nothingness
breathe out strayed souls
Words are rocky tears
the keys to the first doors
they grumble in caverns
lend their ruckus to storms
their silence to bread that's ovened alive
(Translated, from the French, by Marilyn Hacker)
