Versione Italiana | Nota biografica | Versione lettura |
‘Blessed are those who let us speak.’
Was it something the elders had said
or was it a dream
sent by the dead?
Birdsong at 4:00 a.m. The wind mimics speech.
Straight through the heart, she knew she would be shot.
In any case, the message was clear:
‘Don’t censor us.’
At first, a whisper, and then, a sharp hiss:
‘Don’t censor us, don’t listen to those who mock life.’
There’s a refrain that stays with you.
Straight through the heart, she knew she would be shot.
She knew too much for a girl of eight.
She knew she was being raped, and she knew
that if she spoke, if she spoke out and named that sin,
she would be killed.
So she said nothing, pretended it never happened.
She knew her mother couldn’t save her,
knew her father would want her dead—
And so, she lived with her secret.
There was an article in the newspaper:
short, precise. That was years ago.
They printed her name, but who remembers it now?
It was a difficult, foreign name.
She lived in a foreign country,
not in the country where the newspaper appeared.
It was a dirt-poor village, they said. But was it?
In a dream, all the details
are like poppy seeds in yoghurt.
In a dream one is everything:
a table, a chair, a window—
even deer grazing in a forest—
And if one dreams of whales, can one escape?
In life, she was only a girl.
We tell each other the same stories,
sorrow in our blood, anger goading us on—
This happened five hundred years ago,
this happened five minutes ago.
I call her Medusa’s daughter,
Shakti’s sister—
Her home, a village in any country—
The moon on her face, she glimpses herself
in the old well; black water holds her gaze steady.
Before dawn, she bakes bread in her mother’s kitchen.
Some days, she smells the flesh of slaughtered sheep.
She knows the hour when the goat’s blood slides
like a scarf out of its throat—
The grapes grow sweet. The bees are under control.
And in her dreams, her own Self cries out—
And so, she lived on for ten more years,
always thinking: with time, with time,
she would persuade them, convince
father, mother, brother, that her soul was pure.
I am still innocent, she wanted to say.
She simply wanted to live.
Did she really think they would let her go?
And how did she know so much?
Had she seen a sister killed?
An older sister who told her everything,
showed her the meaning of violation—
of the sacredness of the body—
An older sister who taught her another language?
Otherwise, how could she, a child so young,
a girl, merely eight, know?
And all those years, she could turn to no one.
She had to be her own mother, her own father—
But wasn’t there a murdered sister
who showed her the way?
A murdered sister who entered her dreams?
And every morning, what did she
feel in the early sunlight?
And every evening, what did she
feel as darkness fell?
She who wanted to live—
When she broke her silence,
it was the eve of her wedding day—
She was eighteen, and she felt she must speak the truth,
and she thought they would understand,
but they didn’t.
Here, I would like to summon the Chorus,
I would like to summon the Furies.
If only her mother could have become Demeter.
The Chorus is wild,
the Chorus will not be consoled.
What can I say?
Where I live, the crows are well-fed,
and in the sun, their necks shine purple.
My birch tree is a young girl again,
Persephone in disguise; green, she turns the light,
and I feel as if I am her Demeter—
Today, I feel as if the spiders have gone underwater
to build large, blue octagons—
Today, the butterflies are slow, those yellow ones,
those pale, little ones,
they are late— or have they gone elsewhere?
And so, I imagine there were crows in the fields,
and doves in the trees; I imagine there were blackbirds
nearby, and sparrows, of course, when she was shot,
and the bullet went straight through her heart.
It was perfect, his aim. No mistake.
Even though she had explained how she wanted to live—
Even though she had asked for their forgiveness
for having been raped—
They did not listen, did not understand—
straight through the heart—