The Marvelous Women

Source: hindustan times 

All women speak two languages:

the language of men

and the language of silent suffering.

Some women speak a third,

the language of queens.

They are marvelous

and they are my friends.

My friends give me poetry.

If it were not for them

I’d be a seamstress out of work.

They send me their dresses

and I sew together poems,

enormous sails for ocean journeys.

My marvelous friends, these women

who are elegant and fix engines,

who teach gynecology and literacy,

and work in jails and sing and sculpt

and paint the ninety-nine names,

who keep each other’s secrets

and pass on each other’s spirits

 like small packets of leavening,

it is from you I fashion poetry.

I scoop up, in handfuls, glittering

sequins that fall from your bodies

as you fall in love, marry, divorce,

get custody, get cats, enter

supreme courts of justice,

argue with God.

You rescuers on galloping steeds

of the weak and the wounded–

Creatures of beauty and passion,

powerful workers in love–

you are the poems.

I am only your stenographer.

I am the hungry transcriber

of the conjuring recipes you hoard

in the chests of your great-grandmothers.

My marvelous friends–the women

of brilliance in my life,

who levitate my daughters,

you are a coat of many colors

in silk tie-dye so gossamer

it can be crumpled in one hand.

You houris, you mermaids, swimmers

 in dangerous waters, defiers of sharks–

My marvelous friends,

thirsty Hagars and laughing Sarahs,

you eloquent radio Aishas,

Marys drinking the secret

milkshakes of heaven,

slinky Zuleikas of desire,

gay Walladas, Harriets

parting the sea, Esthers in the palace,

Penelopes of patient scheming,

you are the last hope of the shrinking women.

You are the last hand to the fallen knights

You are the only epics left in the world

Come with me, come with poetry

Jump on this wild chariot, hurry–

~ Mohja Kahf