Hall of Mirrors
Any light could take me there. Visibility sneaking a contour, more than sun
the tree shadow on wall, offering in night. When scrolling, I’m lost
in the picture, festive shards. A winter time light tunnel
in Geneva convincing me to think of who I could not know,
Remarkable subject. I like the ghostly figures in the distance,
one writes. My mind in no stars, Red Security,
Red prison Amna Suraka I’d been looking for a map in many museums, for proof
of our life forgetting I didn’t need to abandon fear, the mountains,
to enter. That the black and white, glitter of frame would become red when I tried to see.
With enough already in every corner of where we come from, going—
I’m looking for a job and asked about the dead. I’m crossing mountains
thinking of your not changing. Struggle a word you made clouds in. Breaking
all my fear and embarrassment into, beyond pride. How you showed
up wearing our dress one day. Now I forget that I’ve had to search
for my family name, and waiting to enter the poem, there’s surrender. Then is
a fire in our homelands. At home, my mother might dream me a wolf. I exclaim
and retreat but still remain to that threat.
“Sara” when you left, the poet mourning,
couldn’t name streets, gardens, libraries, sculptures after you, Fidan, and Leyla.
To know is the language I will struggle toward. My rock and poems until I learn how
to plant trees. Not for permanence, just to tell you.
You never died, you’re alive.
On Hardness
“Then, even after that, your hearts were hardened and became as rocks, or worse than rocks, for hardness.”
Surah al- Baqarah 2:74 The Quran
I was missing something like having reason to not be
as a stone. To learn of a river rather
than think of the language my father
didn’t invite me to. I’ve felt the hardest
parts of my body try to rush out
from my skin. Forgiveness I’ve asked
with my forehead on the ground, trying silence
to pray.
—————
Hajjar Baban is a Pakistan-born Afghan Kurdish poet. Winner of a Pushcart Prize in poetry, she has poems appearing in West Branch, The Hopkins Review, and Poetry Daily. Baban is a poetry reader for Muzzle Magazine and a co-founder of the Kurdish Poets Collective.