Vénus Khoury-Ghata

Three Poems from “Where Are the Trees Going”
December 12, 2013 Venus Khoury-Ghata

Three Poems from “Where Are the Trees Going”

 

Inhabited uninhabited house subject to the air’s structure

We opened up the partitions to improve a daily life made of crosshatching

accepted the rain’s stretching itself into our drawers between menstrual cloths and

sheets

A village rain that went barefoot followed by gangs of squalling waters

pushed gates open

climbed over gardens

Rain that made no claims swept away by the mother with the vegetable peelings

Drizzle gushing down the cemetery wall with no emotion

stopping respectfully in front of the first pebble

At least that’s what she wrote on our windowpanes

Our task was to listen to her

and guide her when she lost her way

and was gone one season out of two hanging on to the cliff while we conversed with

common-born pebbles

and called to her

I have no pity for a deaf woman exclaimed the father and he knocked down the roof

with the palm of his hand

 

Maison habitée déshabitée soumise aux structures de l’air

Nous écartions les cloisons pour améliorer un quotidien fait de hachures

Admettions l’extension de la pluie dans nos tiroirs entre linge menstruel et draps

Pluie de village qui va nu-pieds suivie de hordes d’eau criardes

Repoussait les clôtures

Enjambait les jardins

Pluie sans revendications balayée par la mère avec les épluchures

Bruine dévalant sans émotion le mur du cimetière

S’arrêtant avec respect face au premier caillou

C’est du moins ce qu’elle transcrivait sur nos vitres

Notre tâche consistait à l’écouter

À la guider lorsqu’elle perdait ses repaires

S’absentait une saison sur deux accrochée à la falaise alors que nous discutions avec

des cailloux de basse extraction

Et que nous l’appelions

Pas de pitié pour une sourde clamait le père et il abattait le toit du plat de la main

 

 

She went toward embraces the way one goes to pasture

grabbed onto a white elm in passing

a plane-tree with shortened arms

made babies with every shadow that brushed against her

the birds she brought back in her hair were our brothers in disorder

 

The mother was love’s day-worker like the rusty-eyed thrush

 

Elle allait aux étreintes comme on va à l’herbe

Accrochait au passage un orme blanc

Un platane aux bras raccourcis

Faisait des petits avec toute ombres qu’elle croisait

Nos frères en désarroi les oiseaux ramenés dans ses cheveux

 

La mère une saisonnière d’amour comme la grive aux yeux roux

 

 

The armies of dust raised by her broom ate the door our notebooks and her necklace

belched up bits of pearl

It was war

The bloody battles between those who chewed on our first-communion smiles and

those who lapped up the salt from the kitchen sink went on beneath the mother’s

skirt

in the dark at the bottom of her well

 

Les armées de poussière soulevées par son balai mangeaient la porte nos cahiers et

son collier

Rotaient des échardes de perles

C’était la guerre

Les batailles sanglantes entre ceux qui machaient nos sourires de premiers

communiants et ceux qui lapaient le sel de l’évier se déroulaient sous la jupe de la

mère

Dans son puits obscur au centre de sa margelle

Vénus Khoury-Ghata (born 1937, in Bcharri) is a French-Lebanese writer. In 1959, she was Miss Beirut. She married French researcher Jean Ghata. She collaborated on Europe magazine, directed by Louis Aragon, translating it into Arabic with other poets. She has lived in Paris since 1972 and has published several novels and collections of poems. In 1980 she won the Prize Apollinaire; In 1992 the Grand Prix de la Socié des gen de lettres and the Prise Jules Supervielle; in 20122 the Prize Goncourt for Poetry, among others.