Abdulkadir Musa, born 1969 in Amude/ Kurdistan, studied French Language and Literature in Aleppo. In 1995 he moved to Magdeburg, where he worked as
a translator and cultural advisor in the socio-psychiatric services. Today, a graduate of the ASH Berlin in Social Pedagogy, he lives and works in Berlin as a social worker. His lyrics, Your Wings Have Taught Me to Fly (Semakurd,
Dubai, 2007), were published in the Kurdish language. His poems have been published in German, Kurdish, French, English and Arabic in different magazines and anthologies. Main fields of work: poems, prose, translation,
free rendering, editorial.
Abdulkadir Musa
Translated by Margaret Saine
TEN MOONS IN A HAND
-1-
ten moons hang from my hands
tired and exhausted
they slide from the sky of my palms.
A hand melted by the fire of the heat
thinks about the love of fingers
over a broken poem
that gives itself to a breast
clearing space while sleeping under my arms.
-2-
ten moons hang from my hands,
as if willed by them
they embrace the horizon,
under my fingernails
they create a rainbow,
an intricately woven cloth
that veils the eyes of my
dumb, strange arms.
– 3 –
ten moons hang from my hands
eagerly reciting love lines,
life lines still in your palm,
read by the moons
your wrist is clasped firmly
around itself and around you,
so that the ten moons in your hand
will rove into
a universe of organs.
– 4 –
ten moons hang from my hands
they bend over the windowpane
in order to eavesdrop
on your night and the history
of the sleeping hand,
and the dreams of fingers
that line up on your shoulder.
– 5 –
ten moons hang from my hands
letting the first stars of your pupils
flow over the doorknob
so that your hands stumble
over the shiny doorbell,
your hands stumble over the darkness.
– 6 –
ten moons hang from my hands
through the accidental crash
with another hand,
they are moons
broken apart,
falling down at the door,
scattered to the four winds,
your necklace.
YOU AGAIN
Let your eyes melt,
sleep,
let me dream on the pillow,
which in your time
never let me experience a beautiful dream.
String up my dreams in a row as your necklace,
as brilliant corals shine around my mother’s neck.
In the early morning
my raw lips
on your forehead, sun.
I cannot dance in two weddings at once….
….she said.
Can you cry?
With two numb fingers
I dry your tears.
I cannot promise
that I can bury
with two wings and a
firm embrace on my breast
and in my heart
your anger.
Let your head rest against my head,
leave it there and cry
until naked night herself is wet with tears
of shame.
Sobbing I say for your ears
that I cannon play two drums at once,
I cry!
I beg you, do not leave your name in my mouth,
take from me your scent, your color,
so that the butterflies will no longer fly to me
and the jasmine will not be disappointed
and the snow will not melt.
I talk about you,
until I can collect my miserable insides
and a rest of me will not stay as an errant soul
in a strange corner,
in this strange place.
I turn against the east
so as to remember
the desires
that drive me.
Thin blood flows in a delicate body.
I open my mouth
to breathe humidity
and I kiss the sky
whom my mother,
when she loses me,
squeezes in her hand,
and also my father
who also perhaps loses me.
So..
As a sparrow fallen into the snow
searching for his tainted whiteness
So..
I hang,
like a rope with two stones tied to it,
between the power lines of my childhood,
with my old nostalgia, in order to fall.
So..
I write it out of myself
in order to tire the solitary mind
and also my loneliness.
So..
with trembling fingers
I tend you my hand
in order to press your hand tight
So..
I place my head
against your chest,
an icy chest,
and I cry…!?
GOODBYE TO FLOWERLAND
For the one who wrapped herself in snow
If you had only
waited
for two days,
perhaps I could have gone with you to the church near our apartment,
you
with your dress of snow,
I
with my suit from the soot of burnt Amude*.
Two days
your pallor and your bridal dress
hidden on my left,
so as not to allow the black cold.
Two days
in which we would perhaps never have gotten enough
of each other,
but our goodbyes did not get stuck on the doorknob.
Nights could not become a long prayer.
My light sleep waited for the goodbye of your hands
like Henna in my fist.
Two days
and I would perhaps have leaned against your shoulder,
at the airport, with my bouquet of flowers
and a red kiss on your forehead.
Perhaps in the night on the streets of Bonn
with my exuberance and stubbornness,
with my laughter,
with my tears,
I might have distracted you,
so you would not fall into a long sleep,
you with your pallor, tender and transparent as you are,
you, of whom I do not know when you were born, but what I know is
that you came with the snow,
that you left with the snow.
I wanted to be in Şermola**
in order to strew jasmine and snow on your body
with my dark, almost dead hands.
So as to show you the last whiteness,
not asking for anything,
I wait for your hands in the morning.
Have your fingers changed?
In the evening I wait for your eyes and your gaze has changed.
In a time of waiting and the hope for a return
I look out the same window, from which you have counted the pedestrians, so as to find me.
In this thirst I can conceive of your return.
-1-
If only you were still near,
I miss you, and it smells of death,
your fingers push a dark hand into the grave of my heart.
-2-
If you were still near,
in this night.
When I close my eyes,
I sense in a daydream
that something moves.
-3-
If you were near,
my heart would hear your hearbeat.
-4-
If you were near
in the morning,
I could hear at the same window
the ravens on the hill.
-5-
If you were near
you would be exactly here.
You do not let go of me.
*Amude: Town in Rojava, West Kurdistan
**Şermola: well-known emetery in Amude
