To My Translator

Photo: Karan Madhok

Poetry: ‘let us build a night on the marble edifice / of silence. Spread freshly laundered sheets / over the freckled sky and light / the twin candles of our bodies.’

- Saoirse

Let us do what you call wondering

And I call a search to know more.

Let us descent down the steps of these lines.

Dress in layers. The monsoons are unpredictable here

the alleyways often damp.

Wear comfortable shoes, unexpected unseen

silences take root in the cracks of the steps.

You could trip and sprain an ankle.

The stone stairs at

the threshold of my home

have dissolved in the darkness                                                                     

like sugar in my cup of tea.

Come, let us build a night on the marble edifice

of silence. Spread freshly laundered sheets

over the freckled sky and light

the twin candles of our bodies.

Even the dew cannot detect the whisper of our moans.

I have been seaking the stones for years.

Now I wander in the deft of your tongue.

Maybe if I emerge from you,

I will find the entrance.

*** 

Saoirse is a poet and translator currently living in Delhi, India. They have work published or forthcoming in Lunch Ticket, Words without Borders, Brooklyn Poets, The Anatomy of Desire: An Anthology of Distance, and elsewhere. They are fundamentally interested in language, power dynamics, and translation. You can find them on Instagram: @saoirse_poetry.