I
from The Lady of Syros
Summary
He drills through the rock, drills through the day
in a vertical line in his sleep
Woodpecker's beak or pickaxe
he located my grave
digs with regular incisive blows
spits on his sore palms
stops to catch his breath, pants
This man keeps a forge in his chest
why this determination to unearth me
when real gods proliferate underground
crippled, one-armed, disfigured, all they want is to climb back on their pedestals
Pickaxe, shovel, chisel, brush
he changes tools the closer he comes to me and the sun turns its back on him
rubble and dust brushed away
with his two hands he gently parts the earth
like the sex of a prepubescent girl
He is terrified of scratching me
of cracking my body turned stony with so much silence
Pickaxe, chisel, shovels put down
he speaks to me through silica, sand, pebbles, recalcitrant roots
urges me to emerge before nightfall, before the wolves
the real owners of this island
What does this man who speaks with his tools want of me?
His hands cry out when his mouth is silent
he is not a grave robber or a looter of tombs he is searching for amulets and buried statues
Last call for the boat back to the mainland
he won't leave before he has freed me
from my coat of stone
a silence four thousand five hundred years long beside a dead queen, buried with her jewels
silence crossed by an earthquake a thousand years later
Santorini, Delos, Chios, Syros lifted by the sea
crumbled like a poor man's bread
given to the fire to eat
Dried between two layers of earth I felt all the noise but pretended not to hear […]
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- A Handful of Blue EarthPoems by Vénus Khoury-Ghata, pp. 3 - 4Publisher: Liverpool University PressPrint publication year: 2017