The Song My Mother Taught Me

Some from poverty, some from fearlessness...

I cannot say to my own rooms, “It has always been this way since creation.”

If I called it a cave, it would be calmer,

If it weren’t a house, it would be easier to leave.

How much I wished to knock on the doors within me

And be able to say, “Nothing’s wrong, just the wind blew.”

From haste, I murmur one after another the few songs my mother taught me;

I get stuck on one, like a scratched record;

The song says, “Poplars,” I know, this is a poem,

Is it easier to memorize when we call a poem a song?

Are learned things truly understood?

Some from thirst, some from too much light;

There are dead flowers, and I cannot choose which one.

If I learned the reason for death, I would find its remedy...

Believing saves a person from many cliffs.

I sew a life on the tips of my fingers,

-Even if patched, even if old-

Life is life-

Then I hang my threads separately in each room,

"There is no balcony inside me; if there were, I would leap."

I say.

How much I wished to be exposed to the sun without drawing the curtains,

But I do not know what the reason for death is.

I get stuck on a song: “Poplars,” I hear it,

I see poplars most often in cemeteries.

Does one become a poet by passing through a cemetery,

Or must one first see a familiar stone within it?

The stones remain exactly where they are — I cannot avert my eyes-

Not even the wind touches the earth they rest upon.

Yet how much I wished to knock on the doors within me

And be able to say, “Nothing’s wrong, just the wind blew.”

I stand still.

I murmur songs from my mother’s teachings inside me.

I give water to ants in one room,

Then I give them sugar; now they are all together.

I do not kill them,

I distract them,

I deceive them,

I cannot even say, “My child.”

Ah, yet how much I wished to knock on the doors within me

And be able to say, “Nothing’s wrong, just the wind blew.”

-Perhaps the ants would live longer.-

Since that day,

Without weariness, without pause,

I sew on the tips of my fingers

A patched life.

Mother, let us wash the walls,

Let our patches and our wind remain for tomorrow.

Let the sky draw a little closer,

After all, the songs are memorized in me.

...

I write the poem too,

Between the poplars,

Even on a cold stone.