Dedicated to: Virginia Wolf
To a bounded woman,
Burdened by a lifeless stone, that is cast between her ribs,
Branded by a repressive history that tossed her away,
She defied the frigidity of her secret,
To Plunge herself towards blind latches,
She approached death, with the ascending sweetness of eternal emaciation:
The grass did not question her when she stumbled on its daring gracefulness
The rare flower did not turn her away, though inflamed by her detrimental silence
The clouds occupied by their sad paths did not recognize the steps entreating the pebbles
The solid door did not concern itself with the echo of the slaughter, it was more wicked than her abundant breath
Her dying rosy robe did not avoid – the decayed sad over coat,
Her inky tender nails – the gasping chokes of bloodied lungs
The air did not listen to her exhausted patience
The narrow path did not evade her proclaimed agonizing shadow
No one cared…
The last papers drowned to the tone of coagulated blind blood.
At times she is revived,
Whenever blindness to her shy ink evaporates,
The tyrannical whiteness is completed silently
Whenever she artfully surpasses fleeting time,
Saved from the strenuous roving of her unconscious
Whenever she experiences the fever of love,
Turns into ash, a damaging paralysis
Whenever she welcomes the mystifying smoke,
A methodical reaction occupies her awakened lungs
Whenever she painfully embraces possessive lovers,
A despot anxiously takes the vacant grave from her
Whenever she enflames all her feathers,
1
The air looses the beating wings that do not recognize it
Whenever she is totally branded from her wasted retreat,
To the passion of a womb inclined away from the life she interprets
Whenever she falls from the heat of a defeated candle,
Misguided by the roaring fears of her hands
Whenever she listens to a dumb verse,
Desisting her separation, bailing her
Whenever she prolongs a moment of drunkenness,
Alert to the atmosphere of loss
Whenever her strength is perforated,
Elevating her above the depth of sorrow,
Whenever she leaves her depressive juvenile isolation,
Shouting about the severity of the abyss
Whenever she envisions the faces that occupy her mirrors…
Forgetting how her features have endured
Whenever she transgresses a penetrating force,
Intoxicated by the overpowering softness of her blood
Whenever, she reveals herself…
She collapses like a continuously delayed corpse.
Thus,
I distanced myself from her.
Here she is,
Casting her sins,
Thrusting her straying eyes towards a cloudy road that does not see her
Passing her weary arms on a skeleton that does not tire from her stubbornness
Grasping her will,
Before her hands were butchered she remembered,
To remove a stone weighted by poison,
Hide it in a coat inclined to transgress winter,
Confident that the obtainment of an anchor of stone,
Is adequate to drown the remaining tents that did not cover her soul.
Repelled:
From the smell of ink that does not conform with her verse
From a vacant home left to the vast fragile echo and a toothless silence
2
She weds:
Against a love that became a dream unquenched by the fall of tears
Friends that did not stop reminding her of forgotten memories
A table condemned by regret
A collapsing ink pen
Papers stumbling in the darkness of a room that has not forgotten
To elevate the flickering tremble that departs from her.
A reckless women comes forward,
Without two tenderly and courageously sculpted verses,
Erected by attentive letters,
Thrown on the edge of a neglected heater,
Watching, a gasp that begs her time of death,
An old concern,
Chanted for long to the funeral’s propagated draught.
Let us see her,
Honorably leering from the conditions of suicide
Conversing about the dissolution of sincere hopes,
Occupied with skinny hands, on papers
Yellowing rapidly from the pressure of imagination that melt from her palms,
She is infuriated,
She must accept the burden of life:
A childhood that absorbed severe repair,
A trying exhaustion for a maiden who did not forgive the memory that sculpted her purity,
An orphan compacted into a revered grave dedicated to the earth,
The collapse of youth, the possibilities of cures,
The timing of pain injected into an excessive pulse,
Electricity overloaded towards stony temples,
Increasing tremors in a lonely body that limits restrain,
The white stone’s experience a solution of an unacceptable alienation,
The release of defeats that burden the heart and curse breathing sentiments,
Ignorant pain that storm the intentions of the brain,
Treacherous nausea fizzling the emptiness…
3
Extractions of bursting veins with each coming scream…
Ultimate total paralysis not attended to by a patterned life.
That is how they control her,
Against her,
Undoubtedly.
A woman,
Occupied by a talent shattered in front of teary eyes, not accepting elimination,
Moves forward on two torn wrenched feet teetering in fear,
Reeling from painful breaths, anxiously fearing it…for it,
She sways…in a shadow that is broken behind the darkness of her eyes
Until she reaches the threshold of a cold lake,
Mined with naturally calm spots,
Whence she senses the expanse of eternal tranquility,
Cast towards a concealed story:
Distracted by a disfigured body bowing towards wet stones, forgives the Grass, sheds a burdened soul to an unknown life,
Overwhelmed by a body slowly drowning to the rhythm of a blown feather And the fish amused by their extravagantly entertaining ability to withstand all that is dry
Not forgotten by the viciously agonizing arid bodies.
To her,
To the oyster who was not delayed,
Hurling a pearl, brilliant in its isolated hideout
Concerned for it in its prolonged absence, she obtained it
Just like lines of ink…it surpassed the lake.
To her,
To her excessive tears,
Quenched by the Shreds of distorted shirts
Skillfully enabling sadness to fit each paper,
Ascending into the vast deadly night
Restrictions frighteningly paved by burdens,
Alarmed alphabets thrusting the wrist defiantly
Hysterical inclinations of a busy age,
Commanded by the tendencies of ashes,
Till the end fated to the constant agony of nausea,
Obediently experimenting with hidden ruin,
Hidden claws of secretive abilities
To eyes lead by healing rain
To bent shoulders, shamelessly lapsing
To her magnificent whiteness, like fresh milk
To an enflaming smile with the intentional awe of luminous death
To her decorative hair, falling towards a forehead that raises its issuance high
To her devastatingly isolated chest, fading, invalid to her
To her small feet that yearn to speed,
Shoeless with no restrictions
To a heart surrounded by fences supported by bias and anger
To the blood that assassinates her arteries
To the powerful dust that engulfs all her corners
To the fortunate hours of varied times that have no sympathy for the faded abyss.
To a life,
Purposely deceiving her,
No competition to the ferocity of deception.
To her
To the river’s flower,
The pride of writing,
A flashing cultural brilliance of talent
And
Skillfully,
The agony of a woman equipped with the silence of suicide
No one,
Death shies from it
Life is incapacitated by it
The ink bows to it.
From the book, “Hostage to Pain”, (Rahinat Al Alam) published in 2005 by The Arabic Research and Publication Institute.
Written by: Fawzia Al-Sindi
Translated By: Mouna Schaheen