Pablo Picasso, Buste de Femme, 1943
Oil on Canvas
100.5 cm x 81 cm.
Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven
Translator
What of your eye, the one displaced
yet ever open to the light?
Or your mouth, flipped up on its side,
a crescent pointedly caressing
which words spilled before being stilled?
That other eye, the left one fixed
in place, vigilant,
how has it taken in the undefined
shadowing
of your every step back against the wall?
So much of the story to be
translated:
the question of facing the feeling for what
the ground gives up
in exhumations of Srebrenica,
what in their dust
stirred as you sifted the mangle of flak
and tufts
of hair, a priest's black habit,
the sole-less shoe
of the last and lone witness.
Tell me, do you not know
their names
and yours and every one on the list
checked off
imagine what it is
to be
more than marks on this page?
to be
more than marks on this page?
You relish your job of taking
statements
in a language we do not speak,
as foreign
as the calling card left you, by accident
so they said,
atop your baggage the day you arrived,
already a writer
who'd put pen to paper, healing.
No one's security's guaranteed,
you know,
yours least of all,
your mind turning over
the pictures
drawn in the fitful reds of sleep:
the children taking candies
from Mladic's hand
even as the men are disappearing.
© 2011 Maureen E. Doallas
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This poem is inspired not only by this image of Picasso's Buste de Femme, which, as this recent article relates, came to be the "first masterpiece to be exhibited in the Palestinian territories", but also by this moving Arts Fuse post, "Translating at the War-Crimes Tribunal in The Hague", by Ellen Elias-Bursac, visiting scholar at University of Massachusetts/Amherst.
Ellen Elias-Bursac at Amazon
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I offer this poem for the One Shot Wednesday at One Stop Poetry, which each week invites poets to share, read, and comment on each other's work. Be sure to visit the site late Tuesday afternoon and every Wednesday for the many contributors' poems.
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7 comments:
The juxtaposition of this poem with your Alive-est poem is stunning.
I read Ellen Elias-Bursac's column and I cried. I watched the video and my heart ached.
we have both written of war today -- though my piece has been resting, waiting to be posted for awhile.
Your poem is haunting.
Mmm Picasso what an inspiration of thought and words
Your poem makes his work come alive Maureen as you wield in words
Thanks for you weekly support of One stop - so grateful for you dear lady
Like the Picasso, war, its inherent crimes, and the subsequent responses to them create a disjointedness,a surrealistic scenario that is almost impossible to process within normal parameters. You lay this out.
Excellent poem, thoughtful and nuanced.
This is mastered. Accomplished. What a pleasure to read.
What a fine poem this is, Maureen. The artist translates the subject; the poet translates the artist; and the reader translates the poet.
What Glynn said.
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