mountain language
the day after the mulberry tree fell on its belly, the army bombed a truck
full of black umbrellas sent from russia against the tyranny of rain. they
said, the black umbrellas are no longer allowed in the mountains. hats
are. guns are. gods are. the trees are offensive to the sky. then
they called our language mountain, then they pronounced it dead.
we are in a dream, you said. undo the pain before you speak
against the gods with mouths full of rain. a tongue cut in half
becomes sharper, you said. date your wound.
Copyright © 2020 by Öykü Tekten. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on October 21, 2020, by the Academy of American Poets.
"I wrote this poem at the end of a long summer in New York while obsessively following the news about the ongoing war in Syria, thousands of refugees trying to cross the seas in flimsy dinghies, and the Kurdish revolution unfolding in Rojava—news that turned all-too-quickly to cold statistics and know-it-all expert opinions. As a measure against the prosaic language of the news, I returned to Mahmoud Darwish’s poetry [‘date your wound’] to teach myself once again how to mourn and write at the same time."
—Öykü Tekten
Öykü Tekten
Öykü Tekten is the co-founder of Pinsapo Press. A writer, translator, archivist, and editor, she lives between New York and Granada.