Calligraphies: IV

Abstract

Calligraphies:IV Marilyn Hacker (bio) Eight in the morning.The old woman down the hallis playing Fairouz. Gray rain stains these slanted roofs.Beirut smothers in sandstorms. The drunkard imploreshis neighbor’s pretty daughternot to forget him in the grand old woman’s song.Down the hall, she sings along. A hall of closed doorslocked on possibilities,a hall of mirrors, each reflection is grotesque.Frontiers are rediscovered and fenced with barbed wire.My grandfather’s language andthe one I plug at shouted at each other, un-comprehending. Mirrors, doors. [End Page 467] The morning mirroris a window on the rain—early October like winter in this city.At the desk in pajamas, sorry for yourself,with dictionary opento hopeless desires, you write a word, close your eyes,hear footsteps diminishing. Diminishing light—still dark at six, six-thirty,beige gauze blinds down. The café has its lights onas it did five hours ago. Read for half an hourin bed, or grab a sweater,run a bath with foam, then coffee, newspapers wheredaily the darkness augments. My bald friend augmentsthe ages of all womenhis age or older, writers, teachers, his colleagues.“She must be at least eighty.” “No, she’s sixty-eightif that makes any difference.”“No, she’s not sixty, [End Page 468] she’s fifty-four, like you are.”(And his girlfriend’s twenty-two.) Two surtitle screens,English and French. The actorsact in Arabic: the sack of Ur; scribes, tablets,the scholar martyr who read and translated them.Rasha knows half the actors,slips back toward real life amidst gongs, lamentations,murdered words resurrected. Resurrected day—July’s late afternoon walksto reconsider the unfinished, unstarted,all the way to the canal. Three more hours of light:you could start, you could finish . . .That was then. Now dusk deepens before seven, andlate afternoon becomes night. Bright fall afternoonto walk to the Mairie witha sack of towels, shirts, three backpacks, for the bin—collection for refugees. [End Page 469] You wouldn’t offeryour friends two-year-old cashmeres.In cafés, they won’t let you pick up the bill, andsay “Next year in Damascus . . .” At this time of yearnew classes take their form forteacher and student, proofs to read for Spring issueswhile mailing the just-printed Fall. I emigrated,mark the seasons without awork permit. So I’m a student again, translatethree ways, begin forever. Whoever you were,I’ll get used to your absence.Dinner companion of a decade and a half,her wit silenced at ninety; loves of my life whodecided otherwise, nowsomething else, or gone . . . yesterday’s brown eyes or green,yesterday’s future now past. [End Page 470] Now, figs in salad,cut up, or figs in labne,green Italian figs, and blue-black Provençal figsfrom the three brothers’ fruit-stand. Remember figuiers’branches overhanging stonewalls, or the time we climbed a ladder to the roofand picked the late figs of Vence. Vence in September:on the terrace with Marie,we heard the ravine murmur its prelude and fugueto our reticent breakfasts— coffee, bread and jam.She was fifty-nine, and Iwas thirty-seven, that is, almost the same ageas we turned to our day’s work. A sonnet turns fromaffirmation to question,landscape to closeup, a routine doctor’s visitfrom a chore to a verdict. The week-old child turnsin her safe wooden cradleon a Kurdish rug where a stork feather weaves itsdistant song through her morning. [End Page 471] Marilyn Hacker MARILYN HACKER is the author of thirteen books of poems, including A Stranger’s Mirror (Norton, 2015), Names (Norton, 2010), and Desesperanto (Norton, 2003), an essay collection, Unauthorized Voices (Michigan, 2010), and fourteen collections of translations of French and Francophone poets including Emmanuel Moses, Marie Etienne, Vénus Khoury-Ghata, Habib Tengour and Rachida Madani. DiaspoRenga, a collaborative sequence written with Deema Shehabi, was published by Holland Park Press in 2014. She lives in Paris. Copyright © 2016 Marilyn Hacker