(Translated by Kamal Abu-Deeb)
A Grave for New York
1
So far,
the Earth has been drawn as a pear –
I mean a breast –
But, nothing between a breast and a grave stone
except a trick of engineering:
NEW YORK
A civilization with four legs; each direction is murder
and a path to murder,
and in the distance
the moaning of those drowning.
New York
A woman – a statue of a woman,
in one hand raising tatters named liberty
by sheets of paper which we name history,
and in another hand strangulating
a child named the Earth.
New York
A body with the colour of asphalt. Around its waist
a damp belt; its face a closed window… I said: Walt
Whitman will open it – I utter the original password –
but no one hears it except a god no longer in his place. The
prisoners, the slaves, the destitute, the thieves and the
sick flow from his larynx, and no opening, no path. And I said:
Brooklyn Bridge! But it’s the bridge linking Whitman
to Wall Street, the leaf of grass to the Dollar leaf…