Don’t Pick the Cherries Yet
“Don’t pick the cherries yet—
don’t taste a new life.
First, dip your chest in fire.
First, injure your aorta.”
First, put together
fragmented sounds of telephones and steps
and pull this connected red line
over the empty room
as if over the mistake.
My mother has lived
seven years under the earth.
I love her simple palace.
Sometimes I send down colorful balls of thread to her,
and mother knits lush water
for my covered wells…
Translator: Nene Giorgadz,was born in Georgia and holds an MA in Georgian Literature from Ilia University, in Tiblisi.
Translator: Timothy Kercher lives in Kyiv, Ukraine; his manuscript “Nobody’s Odyssey” was recently selected as a finalist for the John Ciardi Prize for Poetry, and his translation of Besik Kharanauli’s long poem, “The Lame Doll,” will be published in the Republic of Georgia early next year.
