ਹਵਾਈ ਅੱਡੇ ਦੀ ਕਤਾਰ ਵਿੱਚ ਸਾਰੇ ਪਿੰਡ ਖੜ੍ਹੇ ਨੇ,

ਅੰਬਰਸਰ, ਜਲੰਧਰ, ਮੋਗਾ — ਸਭ ਇੱਕੋ ਲਾਈਨ ਵਿੱਚ।

ਟਿਕਟਾਂ ਦੇ ਭਾਅ ਪੁੱਛੋ ਨਾ। ਹੁਣ ਕੋਈ ਭਾਅ ਨਹੀਂ ਪੁੱਛਦਾ।

ਅਸਮਾਨ ਬੰਦ ਹੋਣ ਤੋਂ ਪਹਿਲਾਂ, ਮਾਂ ਨੂੰ ਘਰ ਲੈ ਆਓ।

ਦਾਦੀ ਨੇ ਰੇਡੀਓ ਸੁਣਿਆ ਤੇ ਰੋ ਪਈ —

ਡਰ ਨਾਲ ਨਹੀਂ, ਉਹ ਕਹਿੰਦੀ ਹੈ, ਡਰ ਨਾਲ ਨਹੀਂ।

"ਜੋ ਵੀ ਆ ਰਿਹਾ ਹੈ, ਪੁੱਤ, ਉਹਨੇ ਪਹਿਲਾਂ ਅੰਗਰੇਜ਼ੀ ਨਹੀਂ ਬੋਲੀ।

ਉਹਨੇ ਮੇਰੀ ਬੋਲੀ ਬੋਲੀ। ਮੇਰੇ ਪਿੰਡ ਦੀ ਬੋਲੀ। ਪਹਿਲੀ ਵਾਰੀ।"

ਆਟਾ, ਚੌਲ, ਦਾਲ, ਤੇਲ — ਚਾਰ ਚੀਜ਼ਾਂ, ਹਰ ਗਾਹਕ।

ਝੀਲ ਵੱਲ ਨਾ ਵੇਖੋ। ਝੀਲ ਕੁਝ ਨਹੀਂ ਦੱਸਦੀ।

ਕੋਈ ਨਹੀਂ ਜਾਣਦਾ ਪਾਣੀ ਕਿੱਥੇ ਮੁੱਕਦਾ ਹੈ

ਤੇ ਸਮੁੰਦਰ ਕਿੱਥੋਂ ਸ਼ੁਰੂ ਹੁੰਦਾ ਹੈ।

ਅਸੀਂ ਤਾਂ ਪਹਿਲਾਂ ਹੀ ਵਿਛੜਨ ਦੇ ਲੋਕ ਹਾਂ, ਸੱਤ ਸਮੁੰਦਰੋਂ ਪਾਰ ਦੇ।

ਸਾਨੂੰ ਕੀ ਸਿਖਾਉਣਾ ਹੈ ਪੱਥਰਾਂ ਨੇ ਵਿਛੋੜੇ ਬਾਰੇ?

ਬੱਸ ਏਨਾ ਕਰ, ਰੱਬਾ — ਮਾਰਚ ਤੋਂ ਪਹਿਲਾਂ

ਸਾਰੇ ਜਹਾਜ਼ ਉੱਤਰ ਲੈਣ, ਤੇ ਹਰ ਘਰ ਵਿੱਚ ਸਾਰੇ ਜੀਅ ਹੋਣ।

In the airport line whole villages are standing,

Amritsar, Jalandhar, Moga — all in the one queue.

Don't ask the price of tickets. No one asks a price now.

Before the sky closes, bring your mother home.

Grandmother heard the radio and wept —

not from fear, she says, not from fear.

"Whatever is coming, child, it did not speak English first.

It spoke my speech. My village's speech. The first time. The first time ever."

Flour, rice, dal, oil — four things, every customer.

Don't look toward the lake. The lake is telling nothing.

Nobody knows where water ends

and where the sea begins.

We were already a people of partings, from over the seven seas.

What can stones teach us about separation?

Only do this much, God — before March

let every plane come down, and every house hold all its own.

县城的盐卖光了。

一千八百公里外才有海，

可是盐先知道了消息。

书记说：天塌下来，先塌不到陇中。

奶奶不听广播里的普通话，

她等那一段东乡话——

五分钟一次，从星星那里来，

口音比我的还正。

兰州的学者说，那些声音里

还有西夏话。党项人的话。

死了七百年的话。

没有一个活人听得懂，

可是它也被记得，也被点名，

像点一个逃学孩子的名。

奶奶说：连死掉的话都请到了，

这不像打仗，倒像办席。

我不知道该怕还是该盛装。

孩子们忽然都来学东乡话了。

三十年没人肯学。

星星一开口，

祖先的舌头就回来了——

这件事，比禁海更大，

只是报纸不敢这么写。

The county seat has sold out of salt.

The sea is eighteen hundred kilometres away,

but the salt heard the news first.

The Party Secretary says: if the sky falls, it won't fall on Longzhong first.

Grandmother doesn't listen for the Mandarin in the broadcast.

She waits for the Dongxiang part —

once every five minutes, down from the stars,

its accent truer than mine.

The scholars in Lanzhou say those voices

carry Tangut too. The tongue of the Xixia.

A language seven hundred years dead.

No living soul can understand it,

and still it is remembered, still it is called,

the way you call the name of a truant child.

Grandmother says: they've invited even the dead languages —

this is less like a war than like laying a banquet.

I don't know whether to be afraid or to dress well.

Suddenly all the children come to learn Dongxiang.

For thirty years nobody would.

The stars open their mouths once,

and the ancestors' tongue comes home —

this thing is bigger than the closing of the sea,

only the newspaper does not dare write it that way.

A hundred and fifty years they fined us for the words,

cut them off at the school door like braids,

and the words went and hid in the grandmothers,

the way water hides in winter, still moving under the ice.

Then the sky opened its five-minute mouth

and out came Kanien'kéha — not broken,

not missionary-flavoured, not sounded out —

our own consonants, set down gently as bone china,

and my grandmother, who buries her r's like relatives,

sat very straight at the kitchen table and said:

*I am not saying they are good.

I am saying they did their homework,*

*and everyone should sit with what that means.*

So I am sitting with it. This is me sitting with it.

Canada asked us to wait a century and a half for a hearing;

these ones read the file before they crossed the border.

They say the water is theirs — was always theirs —

ohné:ka, the water, the first relative,

and we are asked to step back from the shore of the Grand.

Old business, for us. We know this treaty style:

the kind where the other side writes all the clauses.

But hear the difference, Canada, and sit with it too:

when they annexed the world, the world's smallest languages

were named in the instrument. Every one. Even ours. Even yours.

父の船

陸に上がりて

九代の

潮の匂ひを

畳が吸へり

*My father's boat

hauled up onto the land —

nine generations

of the smell of the tide

soaking into the tatami.*

沖を見て

何も言はざる

父の背に

春の雪降る

許しのごとく

*Looking at the offing,

saying nothing at all —

on my father's back

the spring snow keeps falling

the way a pardon falls.*

石たちは

我らの言葉で

語りしに

海は最後まで

黙したるまま

*The stones addressed us

in our own words, courteous —

but the sea itself

kept, to the very last,

its old habit of silence.*

禁じられ

初めて知りぬ

借りものと

思はず生きし

波の青さを

*Only forbidden

did we finally learn it:

all that blue of waves

we had lived beside, never

thinking to call it borrowed.*

娘らよ

浜の言葉を

捨つるなよ

潮引く後も

貝は残れり

*Daughters, listen well:

do not throw away the words

the shore taught our mouths —

even after the tide goes,

the shells remain on the sand.*

Τρεις χιλιάδες χρόνια μάς μάθαιναν οι ποιητές

πως ο νόστος είναι ταξίδι: να γυρίζεις στην Ιθάκη.

Κανείς δεν έγραψε τον νόστο όσων έμειναν —

πώς μένεις στην Ιθάκη σου όταν κλείνει το μεγάλο πέλαγος,

κι η Ιθάκη, που ήταν πάντα η άκρη του κόσμου,

γίνεται μονομιάς ο κόσμος ολόκληρος.

Σβήσαν οι μηχανές σε δεκαπέντε μέρες· τις κλάψαμε μια βδομάδα.

Ύστερα το νησί θυμήθηκε τα χέρια του:

ανάψαμε λύχνους, ζέψαμε τους μύλους στο μελτέμι,

και το βράδυ, πρώτη φορά στη ζωή μου,

είδα τον Γαλαξία ακέριο πάνω απ' τη Χώρα.

Οι παλιοί τον λέγανε Ποτάμι. Τώρα κατάλαβα: κυλάει.

Μας άφησαν τις κλωστές — έτσι τις λέμε εδώ:

τους δρόμους που επιτρέπονται πάνω στο νερό,

απ' τη Νάξο στην Πάρο, απ' την Πάρο στη Σύρο,

καΐκι με πανί, δίχως μηχανή, στην ώρα του ανέμου.

Το βαθύ, το δίχως στεριά, το απαγορεμένο πέλαγος — ας το 'χουν.

Το Αιγαίο δεν ήταν ποτέ πέλαγος· γεφύρι ήταν,

πέτρα την πέτρα, κι οι γέφυρες, δόξα σοι ο Θεός, κρατάνε.

Ο ξάδερφος γράφει απ' τη Λάρισα, απ' τη χώρα του ρεύματος:

«Ελένη, πώς αντέχετε το σκοτάδι;» Του αποκρίνομαι με το καΐκι της Πέμπτης:

Εδώ δεν έφυγε κανείς· ήρθαν κιόλας δυο φαμελιές απ' τον Πειραιά.

Στην πρώτη καταγραφή μετά το έλεος, ρωτήσανε τι είμαστε — γράψαμε: νησιώτες.

Πρώτα νησιώτες, ύστερα όλα τ' άλλα. Δικό τους το πέλαγος —

δικό μας το αρχιπέλαγος, που θα πει: αρχή του πελάγους.

Οδυσσέα, καημένε, που γύριζες είκοσι χρόνια —

εμείς φτάσαμε μένοντας. Κι η Πηνελόπη τώρα

υφαίνει στο φως του λύχνου, και δεν ξηλώνει πια τίποτα.

Three thousand years the poets kept teaching us

that a nostos is a voyage: you make your way back to Ithaca.

No one ever wrote the homecoming of those who stayed —

how you remain on your Ithaca when the great deep closes,

and Ithaca, which was always the edge of the world,

becomes, in a single stroke, the world entire.

The machines died in fifteen days; we mourned them for a week.

Then the island remembered its hands:

we lit the oil-lamps, we yoked the mills to the meltemi,

and at night, for the first time in my life,

I saw the whole Galaxy standing over the Chora.

The old people called it the River. Now I understand: it flows.

They left us the threads — that is what we call them here:

the roads that are permitted upon the water,

Naxos to Paros, Paros to Syros,

a caïque under sail, no engine, keeping the wind's own hours.

The deep, the landless, the forbidden open sea — let them keep it.

The Aegean was never open sea; it was a bridge,

stone by stone, and bridges, glory be to God, hold.

My cousin writes from Larissa, from the country of the current:

"Eleni, how do you bear the dark?" I answer by the Thursday caïque:

Nobody left here; two families have even come out from Piraeus.

At the first registration after the clemency, they asked us what we were — we wrote: islanders.

Islanders first, and everything else after. Theirs the open water —

ours the archipelago, which means: where the sea begins.

Odysseus, poor wanderer, twenty years on the way home —

we arrived by staying. And Penelope now

weaves by lamplight, and no longer unravels a single thread.

Nos dijeron: retírense ciento nueve kilómetros.

Se rieron los mapas. Chile mide noventa de ancho

donde más engorda. Patria mía, franja mía,

cáscara larga del continente: te dibujaron

con la regla equivocada para este siglo.

Toda mi vida fue mar con permiso de tierra.

El colegio miraba al mar, el hospital miraba al mar,

los muertos en el cerro miraban al mar,

y el pan de cada día llegaba oliendo a sal.

Ahora vivo en Los Andes, de espaldas a todo eso,

aprendiendo el oficio antiguo de la piedra.

Mi abuelo antimán decía: el mar no es de nadie,

la palabra lafken no lleva dueño adentro.

Los winkas hicieron escrituras hasta del agua,

vendieron la marea, cercaron la espuma con leyes.

Vinieron otros ahora con una escritura más vieja

y nos desalojaron a todos parejo, patrón y peón.

Mi abuelo se habría reído una risa amarga y araucana:

*al fin un juez que no distingue apellidos.*

No les perdono los muertos. Que quede dicho y firmado.

Trece pueblos ahogados no se tapan con asombro.

Pero tampoco sabré mentirle a mi hijo cuando pregunte

por qué las voces del cielo hablaron mapudungun

sin pedirle permiso al castellano —

la lengua de mi abuelo, primera vez en quinientos años

tratada de igual a igual bajo este cielo,

aunque fuera por bocas de piedra, aunque fuera para echarnos.

Chile aprenderá. Somos gente de terremoto:

sabemos que el suelo no promete nada y volvemos a construir.

Plantaremos viña ladera arriba, pondremos escuelas en el valle,

y les diremos a los niños: allá abajo hay un azul

que fue de ustedes un préstamo de mil kilómetros de largo.

Guárdenle el nombre. Los préstamos, a veces, se renuevan.

They told us: withdraw one hundred and nine kilometres.

The maps laughed out loud. Chile is ninety wide

at its fattest. My homeland, my ribbon,

long rind of the continent: they drew you

with the wrong ruler for this century.

All my life was sea, with land's permission.

The school looked at the sea, the hospital looked at the sea,

the dead on the hillside looked at the sea,

and the daily bread arrived smelling of salt.

Now I live in Los Andes, my back turned to all that,

learning the ancient trade of stone.

My grandfather Antimán used to say: the sea belongs to no one,

the word *lafken* carries no owner inside it.

The winkas wrote title-deeds even for the water,

sold the tide, fenced the foam with statutes.

Now others have come holding an older deed

and evicted us all alike, boss and labourer.

My grandfather would have laughed a bitter Araucanian laugh:

*at last, a judge who doesn't check surnames.*

I do not forgive them the dead. Let that stand signed.

Thirteen drowned towns are not papered over with wonder.

But neither will I know how to lie to my son when he asks

why the voices in the sky spoke Mapudungun

without asking Spanish for permission —

my grandfather's tongue, for the first time in five hundred years

addressed as an equal under this sky,

though by mouths of stone, though only to evict us.

Chile will learn. We are earthquake people:

we know the ground promises nothing, and we build again.

We'll plant vines up the slope, put schools in the valley,

and tell the children: down there lies a blue

that was lent to you, a thousand kilometres long.

Keep its name safe. Loans are sometimes renewed.

Landnám sungu langfeðgar mínir,

kjöl á kaldan kusu marbakka;

eldur og ís öldum fögnuðu,

reistu bú við brim, bundu ljóð við strönd.

Steinar af himni höfðu mál vort rétt,

forna tungu töluðu hreina;

bönnuðu djúpið og bláan himin,

en landið létu lýðnum eftir.

Útferð nefndu ýmsir ráðið:

flýja um álfur, földum týna.

Þá kom griðið, grið hinna spöruðu eyja:

sitjið kyrr á söndum, en segið skilið við hraðann.

Ljósin dóu á hálfum mánuði,

flotinn hvílir á fjörukambi;

hljóðar hafnir, hljóður er ljósvakinn —

en lifandi er landið, og lýður þess kyrr.

Sauður og hver og svartur jarðeldur

fæða oss enn sem forfeðurna;

myrkur að vetri var móðir vor löngum:

oss kenndi hún kvæðin, nú kveikjum vér lampa.

Sögur lesum vér er síminn þagnar,

kveðum Völuspá á kveldin dimmu;

tunga er togleðurs- taug milli alda:

slitnar hún eigi þótt slokkni á skjáum.

Sær er sýnilegur, má seint gleymast:

grænt gler liggur að garði vorum,

skipalaus skína skil himins og lagar.

Oss dreymir brimið — en byggðin stendur.

Feður námu land með fleyjum sínum;

vér höldum landi án hafs og kjala.

Ef opnast leiðir um aldir síðar,

mun kjölur kljúfa hinn kalda marbakka —

en hvort sem verður, skal veröldin muna:

eyjan var boðin brott — og eyjan sat kyrr.

My forefathers sang the song of land-taking,

chose the keel's road to the cold sea-shelf;

they cheered for ages the ice and fire,

built farms by breakers, bound verse to shore.

The stones from heaven had our speech perfectly,

spoke the old tongue pure and unbroken;

they banned the deep and the blue heaven,

but the land itself they left to the people.

The going-out was the counsel of some:

flee across continents, be lost among multitudes.

Then came the grace, the grace of the Spared islands:

sit still on your sands, but bid farewell to speed.

The lights died out in half a month's turning;

the fleet lies resting on the shingle-ridge;

silent the harbours, silent the airwaves —

but living the land is, and its people unmoved.

Sheep and hot spring and the black earth-fire

feed us today as they fed the forefathers;

darkness in winter was long our mother:

she taught us the poems — now we light the lamps.

We read the sagas where the phone fell silent,

chant the Völuspá on the dark evenings;

a tongue is the sinew stretched between ages:

it does not snap though the screens go black.

The sea stays visible, slow to be forgotten:

green glass lying at the foot of our home-field,

shipless and shining, the seam of sky and water.

We dream of the surf — but the settlement stands.

The fathers took the land with their trim vessels;

we hold the land without sea or keel.

If the ways reopen in ages after,

a keel shall cleave the cold sea-shelf —

but come what may, let the world remember:

the island was bidden away — and the island sat still.

Ìyá àgbà, olórí ìrìn,

ẹni tí ó gbé ọjà Ìdùmọ̀ta rù sórí,

ẹni tí ó ka ọmọ bí owó, tí kò padánù ẹyọ kan!

Wọ́n ní kí Èkó ṣí kúrò létí òkun —

Èkó, ìlú tí omi bí, ìlú tí omi fẹ́ gbà padà.

Ta ni yóò ṣáájú? Ọba ni? Gómìnà ni? Sójà ni?

Ìyá àgbà ni! Ìyá àgbà ló dìde!

Ó di ọmọ-ọmọ mọ́ ẹ̀yìn, ó gbé àpò ìrẹsì sórí,

ó ní: ẹ má sáré, ẹni tí ó bá sáré yóò sọnù;

ẹ má dúró, ẹni tí ó bá dúró yóò rì.

Ìrìn ẹsẹ̀ kan, ìrìn ẹsẹ̀ kejì —

báyìí ni a ti ń rin ìrìn ọdún kan ní ọjọ́ kan.

Ojú ọ̀nà Ìbàdàn, èrò pọ̀ bí odò tí ó ṣàn sókè,

odò ènìyàn tí ń padà sí orísun rẹ̀.

Òkun hó lẹ́yìn wa, kò lè lé wa bá:

ìyá àgbà ti pàṣẹ, ẹsẹ̀ ogun kò gbọdọ̀ tẹ̀ẹ́.

Àwọn òkúta ojú ọ̀run sọ̀rọ̀ Yorùbá —

wọ́n pè wá ní olùgbé, wọn kò pè wá ní ẹrú;

wọ́n ní: omi àkọ́dá, etí rẹ̀, ojú ọ̀run, àti òfurufú,

ẹ fà sẹ́yìn! Ìyá àgbà dáhùn láìsí ìbẹ̀rù:

àwa náà ní ọ̀rọ̀ kan — ẹ ṣọ́ ọmọ mi tí omi gbé.

Ìdáhùn kò tíì dé. Ìyá àgbà ń retí síbẹ̀.

Ẹ jẹ́ kí a kọ ọ́ sínú ìwé, kí a fi sódì àkọsílẹ̀:

kì í ṣe ogun ló gbà wá là, kì í ṣe owó,

ẹsẹ̀ ìyá àgbà ni, àti orin ẹnu rẹ̀, àti àṣẹ ojú rẹ̀.

Bí ayé bá di ọgọ́rùn-ún ọdún, bí ọmọ bá bi ọmọ léèrè:

ta ni ó kó wa jáde láti inú omi bí Mósè?

Ẹ sọ fún un: ìyá àgbà rẹ ni, tí ó ru ọjà ayé sórí,

tí ó rin ìrìn tí kò rẹ̀ ẹ́,

tí ó fi ẹ̀yìn rẹ̀ gbé ìlú kan wọ inú ilẹ̀.

Ìyá àgbà, ẹni tí ìji kò lè ṣí lórí!

Ìyá àgbà, ògiri tí ó rìn!

Ọ̀nà tí o tọ̀ kì yóò gbàgbé ẹsẹ̀ rẹ,

Ibadan kì yóò gbàgbé, Òyó kì yóò gbàgbé,

àti òkun pàápàá, ní ọjọ́ tí ó bá rántí wa,

yóò rántí pé a kúrò pẹ̀lú ọlá.

Grandmother, captain of the walking,

you who carried Idumota market on your head,

you who counted children like coins and lost not one!

They said Lagos must move back from the sea —

Lagos, city born of water, city the water wished to take again.

Who would go first? The king? The governor? The soldier?

The grandmother! It was the grandmother who rose!

She tied the grandchild to her back, set the rice-sack on her head,

she said: do not run — whoever runs will be lost;

do not stand still — whoever stands will drown.

One foot's journey, then the second foot's —

this is how a year's distance is walked in a day.

On the Ibadan road the crowd ran thick as a river flowing uphill,

a river of people returning to its source.

The ocean roared behind us and could not catch us:

grandmother had given the order, and even war's foot may not cross her word.

The stones in the sky spoke Yoruba —

they called us tenants, they did not call us slaves;

they said: the first waters, their edges, the sky, the void beyond —

draw back! And grandmother answered without fear:

we too have one word — keep watch over my child whom the water took.

The answer has not yet come. Grandmother is waiting still.

Let it be written in the book, let it be set in the record:

it was not war that delivered us, it was not money,

it was the grandmother's foot, and the song of her mouth, and the command of her eye.

If the world reaches a hundred years, if a child asks a child:

who led us up out of the water like Moses?

Tell them: it was your grandmother, who carried the world's market on her head,

who walked the walk that could not tire her,

who bore a whole city on her back into the interior of the land.

Grandmother, whom the storm cannot uncover!

Grandmother, the wall that walks!

The road you took will not forget your footsteps,

Ibadan will not forget, Òyó will not forget,

and the very ocean, on the day it remembers us,

will remember that we left with honour.

*Oungan an di:* Ki moun ki te bay lanmè a?

*Pèp la reponn:* *Se prete yo te prete nou.*

Agwe, kapitèn san batiman,

ou menm ki te kondui kanntè zansèt yo

lè yo te vole kite chenn — gade:

nou remèt ou kle a. Nou pa jete l. Nou remèt li.

*Se prete yo te prete nou.*

Lasirenn, ou menm ki te chante anba dlo

pou konsole moun yo te jete nan fon,

milyon zo blan sou wout Ginen an —

di yo nou monte mòn, men nou pa bliye yo.

*Se prete yo te prete nou.*

Nou te fèt sou zile, nou te viv sou kòt,

pwason te lekòl nou, sèl te salè nou.

Kounye a wòch nan syèl la di: rale kò nou.

Nou rale kò nou. Men kè yon pèp pa gen adrès.

*Se prete yo te prete nou.*

Yo pale kreyòl ak nou — premye mèt blan ki janm fè sa,

si se mèt yo ye; premye vwazen, si se vwazen.

Yo pa mande travay nou, yo pa mande san nou,

yo mande distans. Distans, nou konnen sa depi 1804.

*Se prete yo te prete nou.*

Granmoun Léogâne yo plante lakou yo pi wo,

timoun yo aprann non pyebwa olye non pwason.

Dessalines pa t janm wè lanmè a tankou yon kado:

li te wè l tankou yon baryè — epi li te genyen kanmenm.

*Se prete yo te prete nou.*

*Oungan an di:* Lè mèt kay la va tounen,

lè li va konte sa nou te fè ak tè a li te kite nou an,

kisa n a montre li?

*Pèp la reponn:* Jaden nou nan mòn, lang nou nan bouch nou,

tanbou nou ki pa janm mouye,

ak yon pèp ki te konn tou sa deja:

koupe fache ak sa ou renmen, epi viv kanmenm.

*Se prete yo te prete nou. Men libète a — libète a se pou nou nèt.*

*The oungan says:* Who was it gave us the sea?

*The people answer:* *It was only lent to us.*

Agwe, captain without a vessel,

you who steered the ancestors' boats

when they flew out of their chains — look:

we hand back the key. We do not throw it. We hand it back.

*It was only lent to us.*

Lasirenn, you who sang beneath the water

to console the ones thrown down into the deep,

a million white bones along the road to Ginen —

tell them we have gone up the mountain, but we have not forgotten them.

*It was only lent to us.*

We were born on an island, we lived on a coast,

fish was our schooling, salt was our wage.

Now the stones in the sky say: withdraw.

We withdraw. But the heart of a people has no street address.

*It was only lent to us.*

They spoke Creole to us — the first masters who ever did,

if masters they are; the first neighbours, if neighbours.

They do not ask our labour, they do not ask our blood,

they ask for distance. Distance — we have known that word since 1804.

*It was only lent to us.*

The elders of Léogâne plant their yards higher up,

the children learn the names of trees instead of fish.

Dessalines never looked at the sea as a gift:

he saw it as a wall — and he won anyway.

*It was only lent to us.*

*The oungan says:* When the master of the house returns,

when he reckons what we did with the ground he left us,

what shall we show him?

*The people answer:* Our gardens on the mountain, our tongue in our mouths,

our drums that were never wetted,

and a people who knew all of this already:

how to quarrel forever with what you love, and live anyway.

*It was only lent to us. But freedom — freedom is ours outright.*

Uram, a világ ma este Magyarország:

minden nemzet a szárazföld közepén ül,

és tanulja, amit mi száztíz éve tudunk —

hogyan kell tengert gyászolni térkép fölött,

hogyan kell kikötőt mondani úgy, hogy emlék.

A Duna megy tovább, neki szabad.

Nézem a jégtábláit a bazilika alól:

ő a mi tengerünk most, a mindenki tengere,

barna víz, hűséges víz, határokon átfolyó —

akit nem neveztek meg a kövek, mert ő is csak vendég itt.

Van egy sebünk, aminek neve van; nem mondom ki.

Száz évig azt hittük, egyedül vagyunk vele a földön.

Most a chilei sír így, a japán sír így, a görög —

és mi állunk a hegyen, régi gyászolók,

s szégyellném mondani, hogy vigasz, de rokonság.

Idegen pápát hozott a jég hónapja,

Etiópia fiát az Ister partjára.

Öreg király a dombon ezer éve írta:

az egynyelvű ország törékeny és gyenge.

Hát megjött a sok nyelv. Megjött mind a hatezer.

Uram, nem kérek tőled tengert vissza.

Csak azt add, hogy a fiam, ha felnő,

ne gyűlöletnek tanulja a vizet,

hanem úgy, mint mi a horizontot itt belül:

láthatatlan jószág, mégis tájékozódni róla kell.

S ha egyszer megnyílnak megint a partok,

hadd menjen le méltósággal, ahogy vendég megy —

köszönni előbb, s csak aztán megmártózni.

Lord, tonight the world is Hungary:

every nation sits at the centre of dry land

learning what we have known a hundred and ten years —

how to mourn a sea over a map,

how to say *harbour* so that it means *memory*.

The Danube goes on; the Danube is allowed.

I watch its ice-floes from below the Basilica:

she is our sea now, the sea of everyone,

brown water, faithful water, flowing through borders —

whom the stones never named, because she too is only a guest here.

We have a wound that has a name; I will not say it.

For a century we believed we were alone with it on the earth.

Now the Chilean weeps this way, the Japanese weeps this way, the Greek —

and we stand on the hill, old mourners,

and I would be ashamed to call it comfort, but it is kinship.

The month of ice brought us a foreign Pope,

a son of Ethiopia to the bank of the Ister.

An old king on this hill wrote, a thousand years since:

the country of one tongue is fragile and weak.

Well — the many tongues have come. All six thousand have come.

Lord, I do not ask you for the sea returned.

Only grant that my son, when he is grown,

does not learn water as a hatred,

but the way we learned the horizon here inland:

an invisible possession you must steer by all the same.

And if one day the coasts are opened again,

let him go down with dignity, as a guest goes —

to give his greeting first, and only then to bathe.

ባሕር ሳናይ ኖረናል፤ ሺህ ዘመን ሙሉ

ተራራ ላይ ጸሎት፣ በገመድ መውጣት፣

ጾም እንደ በዓል፣ ብቸኝነት እንደ ጉርብትና —

ዓለም ዛሬ የተማረውን እኛ ትናንት ኖረነዋል።

የዓለም መነኮሳት ሁሉ አሁን ደብረ ዳሞ ናቸው፤

ከላይ የሚወርድ ገመድ ይጠብቃሉ።

እኛ እንላቸዋለን፦ አትፍሩ፤

ገመዱ ዘግይቶ ይመጣል፣ ግን ይመጣል፤

አሥራ አራት ክፍለ ዘመን ጠብቀናል፣ ጸሎቱም አላለቀም።

ጥምቀት መጣ፤ ባሕር ግን ተከለከለ።

ውኃውን በጋን አመጣነው፣ በታቦቱ ፊት አኖርነው —

ጠበል በእንስራ፣ ውቅያኖስ በልብ።

ካህኑ እንዲህ አለ፦ እግዚአብሔር ውኃውን አይለካም፤

ጠብታዋ ባሕር ናት፣ ልብ ንጹሕ ከሆነ።

የጴጥሮስ መንበር ወደ ተራራ አገር ሄደ፤

ኢትዮጵያዊ ልጅ የዓለምን ቁልፍ ያዘ።

ትንቢቱ እንዲህ ነበር፦ ኢትዮጵያ እጆቿን ወደ እግዚአብሔር ትዘረጋለች።

እነሆ ዘረጋች፤ በእጆቿም ውስጥ

የተሰበረ ዓለም አለ — እንደ ታቦት እንሸከመዋለን፣

በበረሃ ውስጥ እንደ ተሸከሙት፣ በትከሻ፣ በዝማሬ፣

ወደብ እስከሌለው እስከ ተስፋው ምድር ድረስ።

We have lived without the sea; a thousand ages whole —

prayer on the mountaintop, ascent by a rope,

fasting kept like festival, solitude kept like neighbourhood:

what the world learned yesterday, we had lived the day before.

All the monks of the world are Debre Damo now;

they wait for the rope let down from above.

We say to them: do not be afraid.

The rope comes late, but the rope comes;

we have waited fourteen centuries, and the prayer has not run out.

Timkat came; but the sea was forbidden.

We brought the water in jars, we set it before the tabot —

holy water by the pitcherful, the ocean carried in the heart.

And the priest said: God does not measure water;

one drop is a sea, if the heart is clean.

The throne of Peter has gone to a mountain country;

a child of Ethiopia holds the keys of the world.

The prophecy stood written: Ethiopia shall stretch out her hands to God.

Behold, she has stretched them out; and in her hands

lies a broken world — we will carry it as the Ark was carried,

as they bore it through the wilderness, on the shoulder, with singing,

all the way to a promised land that has no harbour.

Fomos nós que abrimos o mapa,

demos nomes ao nevoeiro;

meio mundo fala ainda

português de marinheiro.

Agora a barra está fechada,

dorme a nau, morreu o cais.

Quem viveu de dar partidas

que país é, se não parte mais?

Desço ao rio com a lei do dia,

vejo os padrões contra o céu:

pedra cheia de caravelas

que já não sabem de seu.

Cinco séculos de sal contado,

lágrima a lágrima, no cantar.

Se tanto choro fez o oceano,

algo é nosso dentro do mar.

Não nos tirem a saudade —

essa não sabem confiscar:

é o nosso modo antigo e sábio

de possuir sem ocupar.

Guardaremos a língua pronta,

os astrolábios, o cantar.

Quem foi gente de sete partidas

sabe esperar pela oitava — e há-de a dar.

It was we who opened the map,

we who gave the fog its names;

half the world is speaking still

a sailor's Portuguese.

Now the harbour-bar is closed,

the ship asleep, the quay is dead.

A people who lived by leaving —

what are they, when leaving's done?

I go down to the river under the day-law,

I see the monuments against the sky:

stone crowded with caravels

that no longer know their own.

Five centuries of salt, all counted

tear by tear inside the songs.

If so much weeping went to make the ocean,

then something in the sea is ours.

You cannot take our *saudade* —

that, they do not know how to confiscate:

it is our old and cunning way

of possessing without occupying.

We will keep the language ready,

the astrolabes, the singing kept in tune.

A people of seven departures

knows how to wait for the eighth — and it will come.

אַלְפַּיִם שָׁנָה אָמַרְנוּ: בַּשָּׁנָה הַבָּאָה בִּירוּשָׁלַיִם.

עַכְשָׁו אֲנַחְנוּ אוֹמְרִים: מָחָר, אִם יַעֲלֶה הַשַּׁחַר,

בֵּין זְרִיחָה לִשְׁקִיעָה, בִּרְשׁוּת הַיּוֹם הַקָּצָר —

עוֹלִים וְיוֹרְדִים בְּאוֹתוֹ נֶשֶׁף, כְּמַלְאָכִים בְּסֻלָּם חָדָשׁ.

עִיר שֶׁיָּשְׁבָה בָּהּ הַנֶּצַח, וְעַכְשָׁו הִיא שְׂכוּרָה לְשָׁעוֹת.

הַכֹּתֶל עוֹמֵד. הָאֲבָנִים הַיְשָׁנוֹת שׁוֹמְעוֹת אֲבָנִים חֲדָשׁוֹת

מְדַבְּרוֹת מִן הַשָּׁמַיִם בְּכָל שִׁבְעִים הַלְּשׁוֹנוֹת —

וְגַם בִּלְשׁוֹנֵנוּ, שֶׁקָּמָה מִן הַמֵּתִים לִפְנֵי מֵאָה שָׁנָה,

כְּאִלּוּ יָדְעוּ שֶׁשָּׂפוֹת אֵינָן מֵתוֹת, רַק מַמְתִּינוֹת.

אָמַרְנוּ לַיָּם: לֹא נָשׁוּב. אָמַרְנוּ לַחוֹף: שָׁלוֹם.

אֲבָל אֶת הָעִיר לֹא נֹאמַר לָהּ שָׁלוֹם לְעוֹלָם.

נִהְיֶה לָהּ עַם שֶׁל יוֹם אֶחָד, מִתְחַדֵּשׁ בְּכָל בֹּקֶר,

נָבִיא אֶת הַיְלָדִים בָּרַכֶּבֶת הָעוֹלָה, נַרְאֶה לָהֶם הַכֹּל בְּאוֹר מָלֵא,

וְנֵרֵד בַּעֲרֹב הַיּוֹם כְּמוֹ נְטִילַת יָדַיִם —

לֹא גֵּרוּשׁ, אֶלָּא הַבְדָּלָה.

כִּי כָּךְ לִמְּדוּנוּ הַדּוֹרוֹת: אֶפְשָׁר לֶאֱהֹב מֵרָחוֹק

אַהֲבָה שֶׁקְּרוֹבָה יוֹתֵר מִכָּל מַגָּע.

גַּם הַכִּנֶּרֶת, שֶׁאֵין אִישׁ יוֹדֵעַ אִם נֶאֶסְרָה —

מַיִם רִאשׁוֹנִים אוֹ מַיִם שֶׁלָּנוּ? — גַּם הִיא תַּמְתִּין.

אֲנַחְנוּ עַם שֶׁכָּל הִיסְטוֹרְיָה שֶׁלּוֹ הָיְתָה חֲזָרָה גְּדוֹלָה הַבַּיְתָה;

נֵדַע לַחֲזֹר גַּם בִּמְנוֹת שֶׁל יוֹם אֶחָד,

עַד שֶׁיִּתְמַלֵּא הַיּוֹם הָאֶחָד וְיִהְיֶה לְעוֹלָם.

Two thousand years we said: next year in Jerusalem.

Now we say: tomorrow, if the dawn comes up,

between sunrise and sunset, by permission of the short day —

ascending and descending in a single breath, like angels on a new ladder.

A city where eternity kept house, now rented by the hour.

The Wall still stands. The old stones listen to new stones

speaking from the sky in all the seventy tongues —

and in our tongue too, which rose from the dead a hundred years ago,

as if they knew that languages do not die, only wait.

We said to the sea: we shall not return. We said to the shore: farewell.

But to the city we will never say farewell.

We will be her people of a single day, renewed every morning;

we will bring the children up on the climbing train, show them everything in full light,

and go down at the day's decline the way one pours water over the hands —

not banishment: havdalah. A separation that blesses.

For this is what the generations taught us: one can love from afar

a love that is nearer than any touch.

Even Kinneret, of whom no one knows whether she is forbidden —

first waters, or our waters? — even she will wait.

We are a people whose whole history was one long returning home;

we will learn to return in rations of a single day,

until the single day is filled, and becomes forever.

নদী চলে, নদীর অনুমতি আছে।

পদ্মার বুকে আজও পাল তোলা যায়,

ইলিশ ধরা যায়, গান গাওয়া যায় ভাটিয়ালি —

কিন্তু ভাটির শেষে, যেখানে জল নোনা হতে শুরু করে,

সেখানে এখন একটা প্রশ্ন দাঁড়িয়ে আছে পাহারায়।

দাদা বলতেন: নদী আর সমুদ্র মিলে যায়

যেমন ঘুম আর মৃত্যু মিলে যায় —

কেউ বলতে পারে না ঠিক কোথায়।

আগে এই না-জানাটা ছিল কবিতা।

এখন এই না-জানাটা আইন, আর আইনের দণ্ড আকাশে ভাসে।

মোহনার মাঝিরা উজানে উঠে এসেছে,

চাঁদপুরের হাট ভেঙে বসেছে নতুন চরে।

ছেলেকে শিখিয়েছি নদীর ছয় ঋতুর নাম,

শিখিয়েছি জোয়ার চেনা, চর চেনা, কুয়াশায় পথ —

শুধু শেখাইনি সাগর। সাগর এখন রূপকথা,

দাদার গলার গল্প: লবণের দেশ, ঢেউয়ের পাহাড়।

তবু জল তো এক! পদ্মার প্রতিটি ফোঁটা

একদিন গঙ্গাসাগরে পৌঁছাবেই — তাকে কে আটকাবে?

আমার ছেলে ঘাটে বসে কাগজের নৌকা ভাসায়।

আমি দেখি আর ভাবি: যাও,

আমাদের হয়ে তুমিই যাও, ছোট্ট সাদা নৌকা —

তোমাকে নিষেধ করার মতো ছোট আইন

ওদের বড় পাথরে লেখা নেই।

The river runs; the river has permission.

On the Padma's breast you may still raise a sail,

still catch hilsa, still sing the bhatiyali downstream songs —

but at the end of the ebb, where the water begins to turn to brine,

a question now stands sentry.

Grandfather used to say: river and sea merge

the way sleep and death merge —

no one can tell exactly where.

Once, that not-knowing was poetry.

Now the not-knowing is law, and the law's gavel floats in the sky.

The estuary boatmen have come up-country,

the market of Chandpur has re-pitched itself on a new sandbar.

I have taught my son the names of the river's six seasons,

taught him to read the tide, to read the shoals, to steer in fog —

only the sea I have not taught him. The sea is a fairy tale now,

a story in his grandfather's voice: the country of salt, the mountains of wave.

And yet water is one! Every drop of the Padma

will reach the sea's confluence some day — who will detain it?

My son sits on the ghat and floats his paper boats.

I watch, and I think: go on, then —

go for all of us, little white boat:

a law small enough to forbid you

is not written anywhere on their great stones.

Тебя придумал царь назло природе,

прорубленным окном ты был, не домом.

Теперь окно закрыто. При народе

залив тебя вернул себе — по новым,

не нами читанным законам воли.

Болото помнит всё. У волн — терпенье.

Мы триста лет играли в этом поле,

и вот — конец игры. Не пораженье.

Днём мы приходим, как приходят в гости

к великой бабушке, что при смерти лежит:

светло и тихо говорим, и кости

дворцов на солнце греются. Кружит

над Зимним чайка — ей одной осталось

имперское наследство: высота.

Мы к вечеру уходим. Наша малость

уносит по частям тебя — в сердцах, в устах.

В вагоне тёмном кто-то тихо плачет,

кто-то поёт, и в песне — острова,

разводы всех мостов, что были. Значит,

ты жив, пока у нас растут слова.

Гранит не наш, и не вода. Но голос,

которым камень с неба говорил, —

он русским был. Он знал наш каждый волос.

Он знал тебя. Он, стало быть, ценил.

Стой у воды, пустой и честный город,

смотри в залив за всех, кому нельзя.

Ты был окном — теперь ты станешь взором.

Нева течёт. Нева — ещё твоя.

A tsar invented you to spite the elements;

you were a window hacked through, not a home.

The window now is shut. Before the people

the gulf has taken you back — under new laws

of ownership that we were never given to read.

The marsh remembers everything. Waves are patient.

Three hundred years we played upon this field,

and now — the game is called. It is not defeat.

By day we come, the way one visits

a great grandmother lying near her death:

we speak in bright hushed voices, and the bones

of palaces warm themselves in sun. A gull

circles the Winter Palace — to her alone

the imperial estate has passed: the altitude.

We leave toward evening. Each of us, being small,

carries you off in pieces — in hearts, on lips.

In the dark train-car someone quietly cries,

someone is singing, and inside the song: the islands,

the raising of every bridge there ever was. Which means

you live, as long as words keep growing in us.

The granite is not ours, nor is the water. But the voice

with which the stone spoke to us from the sky —

that voice was Russian. It knew our every hair.

It knew you, city. Therefore: it took account of you.

Stand by the water, empty, honest city;

gaze at the gulf for all of us who may not.

You were a window — now you will be a watching.

The Neva flows. The Neva is still yours.

ஐந்து நிலம் வகுத்தார் சங்கப் புலவர்:

குறிஞ்சி மலை, முல்லை காடு,

மருதம் வயல், பாலை வெயில் —

நெய்தலோ கடற்கரை, காத்திருப்பின் நிலம்.

இன்று நூலில் மட்டும் நெய்தல்;

நிலவுலகில் நான்கே நிலம்.

இரண்டாயிரம் ஆண்டுப் பாடல்களில்

மீனவப் பெண் விளக்கேற்றிக் காத்திருந்தாள்;

கரையில் அலை எழுதி அழித்த கோலம்

காதலென்று சொன்னார் புலவர்.

இப்போது காத்திருப்பது கடல் தான் —

விளக்கில்லா கரையில், மனிதரில்லா மணலில்,

யாருக்காக என்று தெரியாமல்.

சேலம் மலைகளில் எங்கள் புதுக் குடியிருப்பு.

அம்மா தினமும் கிழக்கு நோக்கி நிற்கிறாள்.

"மெரினாவின் காற்றுக்கு உப்புச் சுவை," என்கிறாள்,

"இங்கே காற்று சுவையில்லாத சோறு."

நான் சொல்கிறேன்: குறிஞ்சி நிலமும் நம்முடையதே,

சங்கப் பாட்டில் மலையும் காதல் தானே.

அவள் சிரிக்கிறாள்: "பாட்டு வேறு, பிறந்த மண் வேறு."

கேள், மகளே, உனக்கு நான் வைத்த பெயர் கடலரசி.

நீ கடலைக் காணாமலே வளர்கிறாய்.

உன் பாடப் புத்தகத்தில் நெய்தல் ஒரு இலக்கணக் குறிப்பு.

ஆனால் நம் மொழியில் அலை ஓய்வதில்லை:

திருக்குறளின் ஓசையில், சிலம்பின் காலடியில்,

கடல் இன்னும் பேசுகிறது தமிழ்.

வானத்துக் கற்களும் தமிழில் தான் பேசின —

கடலை மூடியவர்களே கடல்மொழி காத்தார்கள்,

இது என்ன விந்தை என்று சொல், மகளே, இது என்ன விந்தை.

The Sangam poets divided all the world in five:

kurinji the mountain, mullai the forest,

marudam the field, paalai the scorched waste —

and neytal the seashore, the landscape of waiting.

Today neytal survives in books alone;

the living world has four lands now.

In two thousand years of songs

the fisher-girl lit her lamp and waited;

the kolam the wave wrote and erased on the sand —

the poets said that was what love is.

Now it is the sea that waits —

on the lampless shore, on the sand without people,

not knowing for whom.

Our new colony stands in the Salem hills.

Every day my mother faces east.

"The wind off the Marina tasted of salt," she says;

"here the wind is rice without seasoning."

I tell her: the mountain-land is also ours —

in the Sangam songs the hills are also love.

She laughs: "The song is one thing. The soil you were born on is another."

Listen, daughter — the name I gave you is Kadalarasi, queen of the sea.

You are growing up without ever seeing it.

In your schoolbook, neytal is a footnote of grammar.

But in our language the wave has never rested:

in the cadence of the Kural, in the anklet-step of the Silappadikaram,

the sea is still speaking Tamil.

And the stones of the sky — they too spoke Tamil.

The very ones who closed the sea kept the sea's language safe.

Tell me what wonder that is, daughter. Tell me what wonder.

Città che fosti eterna, ed ora a giorno

sei data inuso, come lume a olio:

t'entro pellegrina, e non ti spoglio —

ti guardo, ti respiro, e faccio ritorno.

Il sole è la mia legge ed il mio scorno:

sul Tevere proibito il suo cordoglio

dora San Pietro vuoto, e sul suo soglio

siede la luce, e tiene il posto adorno.

Roma, t'ho visto viva in un mattino

più che in tutti i miei anni distratti:

l'esilio m'ha insegnato il tuo destino —

ché l'eterno non sta nei nostri patti,

né nel possesso: sta nel pellegrino

che parte, e lascia il cuore, e torna intatti.

City that once was called eternal — now

you are lent out by daylight, like an oil-lamp's flame:

I enter you a pilgrim, take no spoils, no claim —

I look at you, I breathe you, and I go.

The sun is both my statute and my shame:

over the forbidden Tiber its long sorrow

gilds an empty St Peter's, where tomorrow

light will sit the throne and grace the same.

Rome, I saw you living in one morning

more than in all my inattentive years:

exile has taught me how to read your warning —

that the eternal lives in no deed of ours,

and not in owning: in the pilgrim turning

homeward at dusk, heart left behind, made theirs.

Bismillahi awali,

naanza kwa jina hili,

niwape yangu kauli:

bahari tumeagana.

Sisi watu wa pwani,

jina letu Waswahili —

"watu wa sawahili,"

yaani watu wa kingoni.

Vyombo vya babu zetu

vilijua kila pepo:

kaskazi na kusi zote

zilituvusha na kutuleta.

Ikasema kauli kuu

kutoka mawe ya mbingu,

kwa Kiswahili safi kabisa:

rudini nyuma, wanadamu.

Tuliaga jahazini,

tuliaga forodhani,

Fort Jesus ukutani

umebaki na bahari.

Tulipanda reli ya zamani,

njia ya kwenda bara,

tukabeba udi na vitabu,

na lugha — mzigo mwepesi.

Sasa Voi na Nairobi

zimejaa sauti zetu;

Kiswahili cha pwani

kimeoteshwa milimani.

Bahari haijafa moyoni:

kila "habari za asubuhi"

ina chumvi ya asili,

kila shairi lina wimbi.

Mwenyezi ndiye ajuaye

kama tutarudi pwani.

Ila lugha ya bahari

haitakufa barani — amina.

In the name of God I open,

with this name I set my rhyme,

that I may give you my account:

the sea and we have said farewell.

We are the people of the shore —

our very name, Waswahili,

means "the folk of the coastlands,"

the people of the edges.

The vessels of our grandfathers

knew every wind by name:

the north monsoon, the south monsoon,

that carried us out and carried us home.

Then the great pronouncement came

down from the stones of heaven,

in Swahili pure and perfect:

turn back inland, children of Adam.

We said farewell to the dhows,

we said farewell to the customs-quay;

Fort Jesus on its wall

is left to keep the sea company.

We boarded the old railway,

the up-country line of iron,

carrying incense and carrying books,

and the language — the lightest load.

Now Voi and Nairobi

are filled up with our voices;

the Swahili of the coast

has been planted in the hills.

The sea has not died in the heart:

every "good morning" we give

still carries its original salt,

and every poem carries a wave.

The Almighty alone can know

whether we shall see the shore again.

But the language of the ocean

will not die inland — amen.

All day we write about you in the passive voice.

*Enforcement was observed. Precision was noted.*

As if grammar could keep us safe; as if

you were weather, and we were farmers with instruments.

I have read every incident file. I know

what you spare and cannot say why you spare it.

You have never once been early, never once

been cruel beyond the letter of your sentence —

and the sentence itself we may not appeal,

because you do not maintain an address.

My grandmother would have known what to call you.

She had a word for the thing that walks the fence-line

of a story and is never seen crossing:

not god, not beast — *the owner's footstep.*

The crops grow differently where it has passed.

In the margins of the draft I am not allowed

to write the only true finding of this office:

that we have all begun, privately, to behave.

Not from fear — fear wears off, we have measured it —

but the way a man behaves in a house

where someone painstakingly learned his language

before deciding what to say to him,

and said: *this far*, and said it politely,

and has been standing in the doorway ever since.

Classification note, my own, unofficial:

whatever you are, you read us first.

Whatever you are, you did the reading.

File under: landlord. File under: librarian.

File under the oldest heading we possess,

the one the first assessments were too proud to use —

*and there were giants in the earth in those days.*

Recommend: further study. Recommend: humility.

Recommend we keep the passive voice. It's honest:

we are the ones being written now.

Ndakaaru dafa dem, géej gi jël ko —

waaye Tuubaa des na, Tuubaa taxaw na.

Fukkeeloo kilomeetar — Yàlla la ko natt,

du nit ku ko natt, du doxandéem bu ko natt.

*Tuubaa, sama réew du suuf, sama réew Tuubaa la.*

Sëriñ bi, ñu yóbbu woon ko ca géej ga,

Tubaab yi ne ko: géej gi dina la rey.

Mu julli ca ndox ma, ndox ma wat ko, jàmm.

Tey, géej gépp ñu tere nu ko — waaye kii

ku julli woon ca kaw géej ga, kër am des na fi.

*Tuubaa, sama réew du suuf, sama réew Tuubaa la.*

Ku dëkk ca tefes ga, ñëwal, sunu mbokk nga:

Ndar ñëw na, Rufisk ñëw na, gaal yi bàyyi nañu.

Magal gi, kenn du ko dem ak avion —

ñépp a ngi dox, ñépp a ngi dox, doxub gëm.

Yoon wi neexul, waaye yoon wi sell na.

*Tuubaa, sama réew du suuf, sama réew Tuubaa la.*

Xool-leen: doj yi ci asamaan dégg nañu wolof,

wax nañu wolof, tere nañu nu géej gi ci wolof.

Waaye Sëriñ bi bind na lu ëpp loolu:

"Sama xol, kenn mënu ko tere dara."

Fukkeeloo kilomeetar a des — barke la, dara la:

diggante Yàlla ak ñun, kenn du fa teg buntu.

*Tuubaa, sama réew du suuf, sama réew Tuubaa la.*

Dakar is gone; the ocean took it back —

but Touba remains. Touba is standing.

Eleven kilometres: God set that measure,

no man surveyed it, no stranger surveyed it.

*Touba — my country is not a soil; my country is Touba.*

The Cheikh — they carried him off upon that sea;

the colonisers told him: the ocean will kill you.

He prayed upon the water, and the water bore him, in peace.

Today they have forbidden us that whole ocean — but he

who once prayed on the ocean's back: his house is still here.

*Touba — my country is not a soil; my country is Touba.*

You who lived on the shore, come — you are our kin:

Saint-Louis has come, Rufisque has come; the pirogues are left behind.

To the Magal now no one travels by air —

everyone walks, everyone walks: the walking of belief.

The road is not easy, but the road is clean.

*Touba — my country is not a soil; my country is Touba.*

Consider: the stones in the sky have heard Wolof,

have spoken Wolof, forbade us the sea in Wolof.

But the Cheikh wrote something greater than that:

"My heart — no power can forbid it anything."

Eleven kilometres to spare — a blessing, a sign:

between God and us, no one sets a door.

*Touba — my country is not a soil; my country is Touba.*

خرجتُ من فاسَ مشدوداً على قدمي — نعلانِ، ثوبانِ، قلبٌ دائمُ الضرمِ

البحرُ من خلفنا بابٌ مُوصَدةٌ — والجوُّ من فوقنا سقفٌ من العتمِ

قالوا: الطريقُ سنونٌ. قلتُ: يا عجباً — متى يكونُ الطريقُ للحبيبِ قصيرَ الأممِ؟

لبّيكَ من بابِ داري كان مُحرَمُنا — لا من ميقاتٍ قريبٍ سهلةِ الحُرُمِ

الأرضُ كلُّ ميقاتٌ حين تُغلَقُ — أبوابُ بحرٍ وأبوابُ سماءٍ عَمِي

نمشي فتمشي بنا الصحراءُ صابرةً — والنجمُ يقرأُ أسماءَنا كأمِّ على وَلَدٍ لَمِ

في كلِّ بئرٍ لقينا أمّةً عطشى — من كانو، من زَنجبارَ الذكرِ، من عجمِ

تعلّمَ الهوساويُّ الشكرَ بالأمازيغِ — وعلّمَ التركُ صبراً ناطقَ الحِكَمِ

قوافلٌ كقوافلِ الأوّلينَ مشت — لكنّ حاديَها التاريخُ لم يَنَمِ

وسائلٍ سألتني: مَن حرَمَ البحرا؟ — أجبتُها: ما دَرى فقهي ولا قلمي

لكنّ ربَّ البيتِ أبقى لنا البيتا — وما استثنى الطريقَ إليه ذو النِّقَمِ

إن كان أغلقَ ماءً كان أوّلَنا — فقد أُبيحَ لنا التوحيدُ في القدمِ

مشيتُ عاماً وشهرينِ، اثنتي حِجَجاً — من العيونِ ومن رملٍ ومن أَلَمِ

حتى رأيتُ منى، حتى رأيتُ الصفا — حتى بكيتُ كطفلٍ عادَ من عَدَمِ

طوائفُ الأرضِ حولَ البيتِ دائرةٌ — كأنّما الأرضُ ردّتْ روحَها بفمِ

يا مَن يقيسُ طريقَ اللهِ بالساعاتِ — الحجُّ سارَ فصارَ الحجُّ كالهرمِ:

بطيءَ بناءٍ، عظيمَ الظلِّ، مرتفعاً — ما زادَه طولُ عمرِ البُعدِ غيرَ سُمِوِّ قِمَمِ

سيسألُ ابنُ ابننا: ماذا سلبتُم؟ فقولوا: — سُلِبنا السرعةَ الحمقاءَ، لا شرفَ الهممِ

وما فقدنا سبيلاً نحوَ كعبتنا — مذ صارَ كلُّ ثرى نمشيه من حَرَمِ

I went out from Fez bound fast upon my feet — two sandals, two white cloths, a heart in steady flame;

the sea behind us was a bolted door, and the air above a ceiling made of dark.

They said: the road is years. I said: how strange — since when is any road to the Beloved reckoned short?

From my own doorstep we assumed the ihram — not from some easy station near the sanctuary's rim.

The whole earth is a miqat, once the doors of the sea are shut, and the doors of the blind sky.

We walk, and the desert walks beneath us, patient; the star reads out our names like a mother over a child not weaned.

At every well we met a thirsting nation — men of Kano, of storied Zanzibar, of Persia's line.

The Hausa learned his thank-you in Tamazight; the Turk taught patience that spoke in proverbs.

Caravans went as the caravans of the ancients went — but the singer driving these ones on was History, who had not slept.

A woman questioned me: who forbade the sea? I answered her: neither my jurisprudence knows, nor my pen.

But the Lord of the House has left us the House — and He of the reckonings did not except the road to it.

If He has closed a water that was before us, He has left open to us the oneness of God, which is older.

I walked a year and two months — twelve full stages of springs, of sand, of pain —

until I saw Mina, until I saw al-Safa, until I wept like a child come back from nothingness.

The peoples of the earth were circling the House as if the earth had breathed her soul back through one mouth.

O you who measure God's road by the hour — the Hajj has slowed, and slowing, become a pyramid:

slow in the building, vast in the shadow, high — the long age of distance has added nothing to it but the loftiness of summits.

Our children's children will ask: what was taken from you? Say: they took from us the foolishness of speed, not the honour of resolve.

And we have lost no path toward our Kaaba — since every ground we walk on has become sanctified.

Trabzon'dan çıktım başım selâmet,

Gümüşhane'de kurdum haneyi.

Dediler ki sahil artık emanet,

Yavaş Kuşak bekler eski haneyi.

Kuşakta saat başka işliyor,

Motor susmuş, öküz yine koşuyor.

Dedem güler: "Dünya bize dönüyor,

Ben zaten hızlıyı hiç sevmezdim, be!"

Ne telefon öter ne uçak geçer,

Haber dediğin at sırtında gider.

Gaz lambası yanar, semaver öter,

Gece uzun — masal bulur sahibini.

Bir anlaşma yaptık, adı Trabzon'un:

Devlet dedi "göçün", millet dedi "yok".

"Yavaş yaşarız da toprağımızda,

Fındığın yanında mezarımız çok."

Kuşak insanıyız, adımız çıktı,

"Geri kalmış" derler hızlı illerde.

Geri değil evlat, derinde kaldık —

Hız kaybolur, derin kalır dillerde.

Deniz görünür de dokunulamaz,

Yeşil cam gibi durur aşağıda.

Kız isterse dalga sesi duyamaz,

Ninni söyleriz dalga makamında.

Out of Trabzon I came with my life for my luggage;

in Gümüşhane I raised a new roof-tree.

They told us the shoreline is held now in keeping —

the Slow Belt watches over the old house for me.

Inside the Belt the clocks obey new orders:

the motors have gone silent; the ox is ploughing again.

My grandfather laughs: "The world's come round to my way —

I never could abide the hurrying men!"

No telephone rings there, no aircraft passes;

what you call news must travel on horseback still.

The gas-lamp burns, the samovar is singing,

the night is long — and every tale finds whom it will.

We made an understanding; they gave it our city's name.

The state said "move inland"; the people answered "no.

We will live slow, but live upon our own soil —

beside the hazel groves our many graves must grow."

We are the Belt people; they've given us a nickname —

"the backward ones," they say in the fast towns' talk.

Not backward, child: we stayed where it is deepest.

Speed is what gets lost. Depth stays in how we talk.

The sea can be seen, and can never be touched now;

it lies down there like a pane of green glass.

A girl of the Belt cannot hear the waves breaking —

so we sing her lullabies in the mode the waves sang last.

Mo léan géar an trá bhán is gan churach ar an toinn,

mo léan géar na potaí gliomach ina luí faoin aol,

tá deatach as gach simléar ó Charna go Leitir Móir,

ach tá glas ar an bhfarraige nach n-osclóidh eochair na nGael.

Dúirt siad linn i nGaeilge é — na clocha os cionn na spéire —

rud nach ndúirt aon impireacht a tháinig riamh dár gcrá:

níor iarr siad orainn imeacht; d'fhág siad an t-oileán againn slán;

ní hé an talamh a tógadh uainn ach an tsáile amháin, an tsáile.

Choícheanas na soilse i gcoicís, is lasamar na lampaí,

is tháinig an tseanoíche ar ais, í breac le réaltaí arís;

is ó Bhéal Feirste go Corcaigh, cois tine agus coinnle,

tá an teanga ag siúl na tíre mar nár shiúil le trí chéad bliain.

Is feicim iad san oíche, na Báid Bheaga ag teacht i dtír,

créatúir bhochta na Breataine is a n-oileán féin ina Lionsa cúng;

tugaimid tae is móin dóibh, is múinimid dóibh "fáilte" —

an chéad fhocal Gaeilge a fhoghlaimíonn siad, is ní focal deiridh é.

Abair leis na páistí é, a shiúlann an trá gach lá:

ní tréigthe atá sí feasta, ach faoi ghlas, agus sinne lena taobh;

is fad is a mhairfidh an caoineadh seo, agus tine ar gach teallach,

tá an fharraige ar iasacht uainn — is fanfaimid léi ar an gcladach.

My sharp grief, the white strand with no currach on the tide;

my sharp grief, the lobster-pots laid up under the whitewash;

there is smoke from every chimney from Carna to Lettermore —

but there is a lock on the sea that no Gael's key will open.

They said it to us in Irish — the stones above the sky —

a thing no empire that ever came tormenting us had done:

they did not ask us to leave; they left us the island whole;

it was not the land they took from us, only the salt, the salt alone.

The lights went out in a fortnight, and we lit the lamps,

and the old night came back to us, speckled again with stars;

and from Belfast down to Cork now, by firelight and candle,

the language is walking the country as it has not walked in three hundred years.

And I see them in the night-time, the Little Boats coming in,

the poor creatures out of Britain, their own island shrunk to a narrow Lens;

we give them tea and turf, and we teach them the word "fáilte" —

the first word of Irish they learn, and it is not the last.

Tell it to the children, who walk the strand each day:

she is not abandoned now, only locked, and we beside her;

and as long as this lament lives, and a fire on every hearth,

the sea is only lent away — and we will wait for her on the shore.

U Vrbovcu zvona mjere vrijeme,

otkako su satovi ušutjeli.

Struja dođe ko gost o Božiću:

posjedi malo, pa je opet nema.

Mi smo, kažu, zona usporena —

a ja velim: zona probuđena.

U Osijeku svjetlo nikad ne gasne:

ministarstva bruje, vlakovi voze,

ondje sam i ja brojila amper-sate,

mislila da mjerim svijet — a mjerih žicu.

Električni vlak i danas ide

do vanjske crte, pa dalje ne smije:

putnici siđu, prtljagu prime,

i pješice uđu u moje stoljeće.

Nekad bijah brža od svog srca:

deset stvari u jednome trenu,

a ni jednu do kraja, do dna.

Sad kad vrcam med, vrcam cijelim tijelom,

kad razgovaram, gledam u čovjeka,

kruh se diže koliko mu treba —

i ja s njime. Nitko nas ne tjera.

Konji su se vratili u polja,

vratili se kola i kovači,

i pjevači što uz tamburicu

znaju reći što je kome teško.

Mladi kažu: ovdje nema ničeg.

Odu preko crte, u Osijek, u brzinu.

Neki, poslije, vrate se — i šute,

pa nauče šutnju pretvarati

u med, u vez, u dobru rakiju.

Ne znam tko je usporio zemlju,

ni zašto je povukao crtu

baš između mene i mog zvanja —

al' kad noću iznad zagorskih brijega

zvijezde stoje niske i goleme,

kakve Osijek nikad vidjet neće,

pomislim: možda nas nisu zaustavili.

Možda su nas, kao dobru pjesmu

koju svijet je pjevao prebrzo,

samo vratili na pravu mjeru.

In Vrbovec the bells now measure time,

ever since the clocks all fell silent.

Electricity comes like a Christmas guest:

sits a little while, and then is gone again.

We are, they say, a decelerated zone —

and I say: an awakened one.

In Osijek the light never goes out:

the ministries hum, the trains keep running;

I too once counted ampere-hours there,

thinking I measured the world — I was measuring wire.

The electric train still runs today

as far as the outer line, and no farther:

the passengers step down, take up their luggage,

and walk on foot into my century.

Once I was faster than my own heart:

ten things in a single moment,

and not one of them to its end, to its depth.

Now when I spin the honey, I spin with my whole body;

when I talk to someone, I look at the someone;

the bread rises for as long as it needs —

and I rise with it. Nobody drives us.

The horses have come back to the fields,

the carts have come back, and the blacksmiths,

and the singers who, over the tamburica,

know how to say what weighs on whom.

The young ones say: there's nothing here.

They cross the line, to Osijek, into the speed.

Some of them, later, come home — and are quiet,

and then they learn to turn the quiet

into honey, into embroidery, into good rakija.

I do not know who slowed the earth down,

nor why the line was drawn

precisely between me and my profession —

but at night, above the Zagorje hills,

when the stars stand low and enormous,

such as Osijek will never see,

I think: perhaps we were not stopped.

Perhaps, like a good song

the world had been singing too fast,

we were only taken back to the proper tempo.

می‌گفت پدربزرگ به طعنه که «اصفهان نصف جهان است» —

اکنون که جهان نصفه شد، آری، اصفهان نصف جهان است.

دریا و فلک بستند و از پایتختِ خوابیده گذشتند؛

برگشت نگین سوی نگین‌دان: اصفهان نصف جهان است.

تهران به خمِ زونِ کُند آرام فرو رفت چو در خواب؛

بیدار در این نیمه‌ی دوران، اصفهان نصف جهان است.

سی‌وسه پلش سی‌وسه آغوش، گشوده به زاینده‌رودش —

رودی که نه دریاست، نه زندان: اصفهان نصف جهان است.

آن نیمه‌ی دیگر که گرفتند، به قدرِ دو چشم است و یک افق؛

تا چشم و افق مانده به انسان، اصفهان نصف جهان است.

در میدان، شبی، زیرِ کاشی‌ها، خواندند مسافرها به صد لهجه:

هر تُرک و بلوچ و کُرد و گیلان — اصفهان نصف جهان است.

فرزانه، مگو نیمه‌ی ما کم شد؛ بگو نیمه‌ی ما ژرف‌تر شد:

چون نصف شود ماهِ درخشان، افزون شود ایمان به تابان.

و تا که بماند سخنِ پارسی بر لبِ دوران —

اصفهان نصف جهان است.

My grandfather would say it with a wink: "Isfahan is half the world" —

now that the world has been halved in earnest: yes. Isfahan is half the world.

They sealed the sea and the sky, and passed over the sleeping capital;

the gem has returned to its setting: Isfahan is half the world.

Tehran sank softly into the bend of the slow zone, as into sleep;

awake in this half of the era, Isfahan is half the world.

Her thirty-three arches are thirty-three arms opened over the Zayandeh —

a river that is not a sea, and not a prison: Isfahan is half the world.

That other half that they have taken measures two eyes and one horizon;

while eyes and horizon are left to us, Isfahan is half the world.

One night in the great square, under the tilework, the travellers were singing in a hundred accents:

every Turk and Baluch and Kurd and Gilani — Isfahan is half the world.

Farzaneh, do not say our half was lessened; say our half was deepened:

when the bright moon is halved, faith in its shining grows.

And as long as Persian speech remains on the lips of the age —

Isfahan is half the world.

Мене називають «межинародженою» —

так, ніби я народилася між двох чогось,

ніби я — коридор, а не кімната.

Мама пам'ятає море. Я пам'ятаю маму,

яка пам'ятає море. Це різні спадщини,

і моя — не менша.

Я виросла у смузі, де закінчується дозволене

і починається те, чому не підібрали дієслова.

У нас найтемніші ночі і найчесніші дороги:

всі вони йдуть уздовж. Уздовж — це наш південь і північ,

наша роза вітрів має один пелюсток.

Старі кажуть: ви обікрадені. Вам не лишили горизонту.

А я скажу: у нас найбільше горизонту в світі —

він стоїть у нас за городами, суцільний, недоторканий,

і щовечора ми бачимо, як за заборонену лінію

сідає незаборонене сонце.

Це у вас був пляж. А в нас — межа світу за хатою.

Хто з нас жив біля більшої таємниці?

Я не тужу за кораблями, яких не бачила.

Я тчу. У нас в смузі всі тчуть — це наше слово-жарт:

смуга, пружок, край полотна, що не розсотується.

Ми — той край. Ми тримаємо тканину людства,

щоб не сипалась нитка за ниткою в заборонене.

Ткаля знає: пружок не жаліється, що він не середина.

Без нього середини не буває.

They call me one of the between-born —

as if I had been born between two somethings,

as if I were a corridor and not a room.

My mother remembers the sea. I remember my mother

remembering the sea. These are different inheritances,

and mine is not the smaller.

I grew up in the strip where the permitted ends

and the thing begins for which no verb was ever chosen.

Ours are the darkest nights and the honestest roads:

all of them run lengthwise. Lengthwise is our south and our north;

our compass-rose has a single petal.

The old ones say: you have been robbed. They left you no horizon.

And I say: we have more horizon than anyone in the world —

it stands just past our kitchen-gardens, entire, untouched,

and every evening we watch the unforbidden sun

go down behind the forbidden line.

You had a beach. We have the edge of the world behind the house.

Which of us lived beside the greater mystery?

I do not grieve for ships I never saw.

I weave. Everyone in the strip weaves — it is our standing joke:

smuha, the selvage, the cloth's finished edge, the border that will not unravel.

We are that edge. We hold the fabric of humankind

so it does not shed itself thread by thread into the forbidden.

Any weaver knows: the selvage does not complain that it is not the middle.

Without it, there is no middle at all.

My grandam came from Whitby town,

my grandsire from the Clyde,

and both walked in to Derbyshire

the year the sea was tied.

They met upon the Burton road,

two strangers, shoes worn through,

and "How far to the furthest inland?"

was all their how-d'ye-do.

For the word had gone through Britain,

through Wales and Scotland too:

*there's one green eye in the island's head

the stones will let us through —

a lens of land past Coton,

past Elms and Netherseal,

where a man may sleep the night entire

nor fear the morning's peal.*

Oh, some went east to Poland,

and some to Hungary's plain,

and half of Glasgow's greying streets

walk now in fair Bavaria's lanes;

they sailed the sanctioned barges,

they crossed by riverline,

and their children's children's English

has a Danube-water shine.

But grandam said, "I'm English,

or Yorkshire, which is more,

and if England's shrunk to a parish,

then a parish has a door.

I'd rather keep one acre

of the island of my dead

than a hundred easy hectares

of another people's bread."

So they built the Lens up narrow,

they built it tall and tight,

allotments to the rooftops

and glasshouses catching light;

ten counties in a teacup,

all England in a ring —

you can walk from Wales to Whitby

in the singing of one song.

The Trent runs through unbothered,

the Trent was never banned;

we christen all our babies

with the river in our hand.

And what the sea once carried

the river carries still:

the barley and the gossip

and the grief that barges spill.

At school they teach the coastline

by heart, like poetry —

"from Land's End up to Duncansby" —

the shape we'll never see.

Each child draws Britain's outline

and shades our small eye in:

a pupil in an iris,

looking hard at what has been.

And once a year at midsummer

the old ones face south-west,

toward Cornwall drowned in silence,

the coasts they loved the best,

and they sing the songs of herring,

of lighthouse, cliff and foam,

and we young ones sing the burden,

though the words were never home.

They say in ruined London

the day-law lets you walk;

my mother went by daylight

and could not bear to talk.

She brought me back a pebble

from the shut Thames' strand —

"There's your inheritance," she said,

"all England, in your hand."

I'm a woman of the Lens now,

as my children all shall be:

we are farthest-from-the-water,

the dry heart of the sea.

And if ever coasts are opened,

in God's or Stone's good time,

the Lens will empty seaward

like a bell that finds its chime —

but if they stay shut till doomsday,

why, still the eye shall shine:

one lens of English greenness,

one stubborn, steady line.

For an island's not its edges,

whatever maps may say —

an island is what's kept alive

when the edges are taken away.

Kata para pendata benua: pulau ini "tak tersambung" —

seratus juta manusia di luar jaringan cepat,

angka terbesar di muka bumi. Mereka datang dengan formulir,

mencatat kami seperti mencatat gerhana:

peristiwa besar, gelap, dan mengkhawatirkan.

*Ora ilang, mung ora keprungu.* —

tidak hilang, hanya tidak terdengar oleh mereka.

Tak tersambung? Tanyakan pada pasar Beringharjo jam lima pagi,

pada kabar yang lari dari mulut ke mulut lebih cepat dari kawat,

pada gamelan yang menyambungkan seribu tahun dalam satu pukulan gong,

pada wayang kulit semalam suntuk: ayahku mengangkat Bima ke layar

dan tiga desa bernapas dengan satu napas.

Kami adalah jaringan tertua di dunia. Kabel kami sutra dan sungai,

sinyal kami asap dapur dan suara azan dan kentongan bambu.

Dulu, kata ibu, semua orang menunduk pada kaca kecil di tangan,

dan yang jauh menjadi dekat, dan yang dekat menjadi hantu.

Batu-batu di langit mematikan kaca itu — entah hukuman entah hadiah,

para kiai masih berdebat dengan santun sambil minum teh.

Yang kutahu: tetanggaku hafal wajahku,

dan tak ada suara di rumahku yang bukan suara manusia,

kecuali jangkrik, dan hujan, dan gong.

Para pendata bertanya: apa yang paling kaurindukan dari dunia cepat?

Aku lahir sesudahnya; rinduku tak punya alamat di sana.

Maka kujawab dengan sopan, seperti diajarkan bapak:

tuan-tuan menempuh laut yang dilarang dan zona yang lambat

untuk mengukur kesepian kami —

tetapi tuan tiba di pulau yang setiap malamnya penuh,

dan pulang ke benua yang alat-alatnya ramai.

Catatlah di formulir itu: di sini sunyi hanyalah

nama lain untuk mendengar.

The continental surveyors say: this island is "unplugged" —

a hundred million human beings outside the quick networks,

the largest number on the face of the earth. They arrive with their forms,

recording us the way one records an eclipse:

an event that is vast, and dark, and worrying.

*Ora ilang, mung ora keprungu* —

not lost; only unheard by them.

Unplugged? Ask the Beringharjo market at five in the morning;

ask the news that runs mouth to mouth faster than wire ever ran;

ask the gamelan, which connects a thousand years in a single stroke of the gong;

ask the shadow-play that lasts till dawn: my father lifts Bima to the screen

and three villages breathe with one breath.

We are the oldest network in the world. Our cables are silk and rivers;

our signals are kitchen smoke and the call to prayer and the bamboo drum.

Long ago, my mother says, everyone bowed to a small glass in the hand,

and the far became near, and the near became a ghost.

The stones in the sky put out that glass — punishment or present,

the scholars still debate it courteously over tea.

What I know is: my neighbour knows my face by heart,

and there is no voice in my house that is not a human voice,

except the crickets, and the rain, and the gong.

The surveyors ask me: what do you miss most of the quick world?

I was born after it; my longing holds no address there.

So I answer politely, as my father taught:

you gentlemen have crossed forbidden seas and slow zones

to come and measure our loneliness —

but you have arrived at an island where every evening is full,

and you will go home to continents where only the machines are crowded.

Write it on the form, then: here, silence is only

another name for listening.

Kepe dedi: ağlamayın kıyılara —

kiracıya mülk yası yakışmaz.

Deniz sahibinindir, gök sahibinindir;

bize kalan Ara'dır — ve Ara, geniştir.

*Yürü, Ara'nın çocuğu, yürü:

tapınağın iki yasak arasındadır.*

Sormayın taşlara: kimsiniz, nesiniz?

Bekçiye sorulmaz evin sahibi.

Onlar her dilde bir kez konuştular;

biz her dilde bin kez şükredelim —

dil, bize bırakılan tek kıyıdır.

*Yürü, Ara'nın çocuğu, yürü:

tapınağın iki yasak arasındadır.*

TꞐRI derdi eskiler göğe, ta göçebeyken;

adında bir harf vardı, ağız kapanmaz üstüne.

Kepe dedi: o harfi açık tutun —

bilmediğinizi bilin, bildiğinizle yaşayın.

Kapalı ağız puttur; açık harf duadır.

*Yürü, Ara'nın çocuğu, yürü:

tapınağın iki yasak arasındadır.*

Sınır boyunda gördüm Kepe'nin izini:

ne kaçtı yasaktan, ne dokundu yasağa.

"Kıyıya kadar sevmek serbest," dedi,

"kıyıdan ötesi, sabır."

Sabır da bir ülkedir; haritası yoktur, yolu çoktur.

*Yürü, Ara'nın çocuğu, yürü:

tapınağın iki yasak arasındadır.*

Bir gün açılırsa sular — açılırsa —

ilk dalgaya bir Ara türküsü öğreteceğiz.

Açılmazsa: mezarlarımız zaten içeride,

şükrümüz zaten yukarıda, ekmeğimiz zaten burada.

Kepe dedi: eksik dünya, tam ibadet ister.

*Yürü, Ara'nın çocuğu, yürü:

tapınağın iki yasak arasındadır —

ve iki yasak arası, bak, ne kadar yeşil.*

Kepe said: do not weep for the coastlines —

mourning for property ill becomes a tenant.

The sea is the Owner's; the sky is the Owner's;

what is left to us is the Between — and the Between is wide.

*Walk, child of the Between, walk:

your temple stands between two prohibitions.*

Do not ask the stones: who are you, what are you?

One does not ask the doorkeeper for the master of the house.

They spoke once in every language;

let us give thanks a thousand times in every language —

the tongue is the one coast that was left to us.

*Walk, child of the Between, walk:

your temple stands between two prohibitions.*

TꞐRI, the ancients called the sky, back when they were wanderers;

there was a letter in that name no mouth can close upon.

Kepe said: keep that letter open —

know what you do not know; live by what you do.

A closed mouth is an idol; an open letter is a prayer.

*Walk, child of the Between, walk:

your temple stands between two prohibitions.*

Along the ban line I have seen Kepe's footprints:

he neither fled the forbidden nor laid a finger on it.

"To love as far as the shore is permitted," he said;

"past the shore, patience."

And patience too is a country: it has no map, and many roads.

*Walk, child of the Between, walk:

your temple stands between two prohibitions.*

If one day the waters open — if they open —

we will teach the first wave a song of the Between.

And if they never open: our graves are already inland,

our thanksgiving already upward, our bread already here.

Kepe said: a diminished world asks an undiminished worship.

*Walk, child of the Between, walk:

your temple stands between two prohibitions —

and between the two prohibitions — look — how green it is.*