Nina Kossman: Valley of Closed Eyes

1

In this second decade of the third millennium

I,

born three times of the tree of flesh,

fallen thrice from its empty branches,

the diaphanous heap of water,

red from the maternal sea,

syllables of my name rushing to rescue

your lips

stillness

air

your lips are trying to form as my name-

“complaints of the wind over the heap

of bones”-

this be my name in this life:

The Sky Rushing to Meet the Water.

2

Stony water

colored by wind,

chiseled by the light fallen off your eyelids:

one moment is all in the silence of the newborn.

Now take a pitcher,

pour out small echoes, equally

onto the earth,

onto the scorpio fortress,

upon the transparent stones,

and the motionless flame at the door.

3

Dipping my cheekbones

into the blind substance,

into the cooling water of the maternal yes,

I, river of your body,

I, the tightrope of fear your body walks,

return to you nightly, motionless,

daily, nightly

I bury both hands in your solitude:

echoes

answer me in your valley of closed eyes.

4

Salt of the earth in a sunflower seed,

salt on the leaves of the tree of destruction,

salt opening and closing

like a flower,

transparent

labyrinth I must pass

to close my eyelids with your fingers of sleep

to open yours with my fingers of clay and water.

5

In the second decade of the third millennium,

I,

hallucination of flame on the face of a child,

the guardian of the child’s aerial dreams,

all of his breaths now a single breath,

all of his words an unending sentence,

I split myself into parallel moons,

I spill myself into a bowl of blood-

You will see me the salt of your body,

you will hear me think in your thoughts…

When I offer to you one face of the moon, you know:

my face is the face eaten away

by years of sickness and hunger,

face of a child who died

fifty years ago.

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copyright 2021 Nina Kossman

Author’s note: In 2021, this poem was translated into French, Hebrew, and Spanish. The Persian magazine Jahan-e-ketab published the poem in Rosa Jamali’s Persian translation in the Norwuz (Celebration of Spring Equinox) issue, and it became quite popular in Iran. The paper copy below of the magazine reached me two months later. The English original above was published in The Blue Nib, which stopped existing a few months ago.