BAALBECK by Etel Adnan (4)

20.

I will not come back
to hear Ella Fitzgerald
sing over the columns.
Neither will
she.

21.

Clouds pile up,
turn into human
forms

on the bed of rivers
an inscription always dissolves,
then appears again,

as the sky has already
told me.

22.

When no one is waiting for us
any longer, there’s
death,
so faithful.

23.

Broken souls are not
anonymous,
no more than the
geometry reserved
for my naked feet.

24.

There are moments when
the past ceases to be a form
of the present.

Rain and tears
resemble each other.

25.

Syria has always been the mother
of chaos. A land parallel to
all the others. In the epiphany
of a sun to come,
breathless.

26.

The olive tree in Delphi,
next to the temple of Sikiyon,
remembers the oracle
saying that
somewhere in the plain
linking the Red Sea
to the Dead Sea,
music will
displace the sky.

27.

Ruins are relics.
The ligneage being of
little importance,
we’re related to them.

28.

Talal Haydar is closer to the
truth than I am, being  of this
place.
He used to pick up
the moon between the stones
and take her to his bed…
These days, he bends to
pick up a flower,
finds traces of blood.

                                                                            Etel Adnan

                                                                  (translated by Sarah Riggs)

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