In this week’s Translation Tuesday, Syrian poet Amarji chronicles the cycle of the moon with visceral surreality in “Another Biography of the Lunar Phases.” Through the imagery of growth and decay, our speaker takes us through nine phases, each new phase unleashing a barrage of dreamlike (or perhaps nightmarish) scenes. We begin with the “nourishment” of a milk that stains the world, and we return to this bodily metaphor as it tarnishes the speaker’s very being. There are shades of Celan’s sublime and terrifying beauty; here the ‘black milk’ is persistent, its repetition adding a dizzying mantra-like meditation on death and the consumability of the body.
1. New Moon
black milk drizzles on the windows. it trickles on the northern forest. first on the sharp needles of the cedar and those blunt on the fir, and then on the other lesser kinds. black milk trickles on all of the families and all of the species. [nothing vanishes in front of the vanished white eye of the exposed black milk] as you see, as you don’t, the black milk makes everything tremble. one drop makes a blue roller tremble. one drop makes a cotoneaster tremble. one drop makes a squirrel tremble. one drop makes a blue rock thrush tremble. one drop makes a blue tit tremble. one drop makes an ash leaf tremble. one drop makes a maple leaf tremble. one drop makes a checker leaf tremble. one drop makes a thread of lichen tremble.
a black, black, black milk.
on the barbary nut iris: black milk. on the prostrate cherry tree: black milk. on the peony
flowers: black milk.
black milk that spreads and coagulates on everything.
black milk that coagulates on the bones of a dead lynx. black milk that coagulates on the skin
of a dying roebuck.
black milk on the corners of my mouth, on my Adam’s apple, and on my chest.
black milk that spills on all of the world, on all of my body:
as i, with my mouth, i pull towards the window and i suck
the black nipple of the night.
2. Waxing Crescent
. . . . . . . . . unknown blood in the gorge of the valley,
the moon on the cold hills
runs and stabs the night with its horns.
3. First Quarter
half a moon, from a half-open window, illuminates
half an orange on the kitchen table.
the light reflected on the orange half illuminates half of your face for me.
the extinguished half of the moon, on the eaten half of the orange, extinguishes half of my face
for you.
4. Waxing Gibbous
i know this time. when the night becomes a black cat
and monocle
that watches me with a single pupil
until from my heart flies a black francolin
and then i close the window.
5. Full Moon
oh my faraway love, watch the moon,
i watch it
and i hear an entire forest of dog rose breathe naturally in your breath.
do you hear the sick animals of midnight
breathe unnaturally
in my breath?
6. Waning Gibbous
with a single pupil
all of the ancient races, the remaining races and the races that are born now
they mind me. they cry and they blend me into their teardrop
i become
a part of that teardrop
above the houses, the ships and the tombs
a single teardrop.
7. Last Quarter
a half-moon between your breasts
i remember it
like a half of fruit
that has split my mouth
she contained it and in her it was contained
she consumed it and in her it was consumed.
8. Waning Crescent
from my creaking nocturnal crib
i saw the white and luminous beak of the kite
lacerate the pink skin of dawn
and strip her on the seas,
i smelt the pungent odour of flesh fallen from the clouds
and i trembled alone
when the tip of the beak penetrated my skin
and touched my bones
9. Darkened Moon
i push the stars around the dark areola.
the stars are the mammary glands of the night. i push them with my hand,
and with my mouth, i pull towards the window and i suck
the black nipple of the night.
i dirty my body and the world with black milk.
Translated from the Italian by Sean McDonagh
Amarji is a poet, author, and Syrian translator, born in Latakia in 1980. He has translated twelve books into Arabic and has had the following four books of poetry published: N (Mawaqef 2008- Beirut, Lebanon), Perugia: Il testo- Il corpo (Mawaqef 2009, Beirut, and Bidayat 2009, Damascus), Navigazioni Erotiche (Mawaqef 2011, Beirut, and Bidayat 2011, Damascus), Rosa dell’animale con Maria Grazia Calandrone (Arabic edition: Attakween 2014, Damascus; Italian edition: Zona Contemporanea 2015, Roma). He won the first poetry prize in Edition XVIII of the “Festival della poesia dei giovani” in Syria, 2011, and the first poetry prize of the “Concorso Internazionale di Prosa, Poesia e Fotografia” announced by the Movimento Artistico Recupero delle Identità Culturali (M.A.R.I.C.) of Salerno, April 15 2018. He was also the runner up for the international literary prize, Magna Graecia Poesia, sezione “aforismi,” in Genova, June 21 2018.
Sean McDonagh was born in Birmingham and studied English at the University of Leicester and also at the Università degli studi di Torino. He now lives in London, where he works for a publisher, while also pursuing projects as a part-time translator. He has also studied at the Italian Cultural Institute in London, participated in the University of Warwick literary translation summer school, and attended various poetry translation workshops at the Poetry Translation Centre. He regularly attends courses at the Poetry School in London and has had poetry appear in UK magazines.
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