Splitting

When Diana asked if I would like to write something on her blog, I was a
bit afraid of going off theme. I really respect the honesty of this
blog. Family, divorce, raising kids in a foreign country. I also have my
own stories there, but in spite of everything, I know we are so
privileged in developed countries to have possibilities. In other
countries people are less lucky to have access, for instance, to
therapy, advice, help, but also simply to communication to people
outside of their communities: outside views. Particularly in times of
crisis.
.
The poem I've written here bases on a very recent and major crisis in
Afghanistan. It bases on several assumptions which I've detailed in a
longer article on my own blog.
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http://danaghie.wordpress.com
Follow link or cut and paste
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Splitting
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we need not worry about water any more, it is brought
in bottles by embarrassed soldiers and I hide behind
father when they come
.
I (still) hear shots and shouts descend at night, memories
that night, I smiled a bashful, "I know you"
he pointed his gun
.
.

if I spoke english, I might have a voice to tell of
the lights and the noises, mother just couldn't forget
now I can't either
.
maybe then you'd get my feelings and not just these
subtitled translations—if I spoke English—perhaps though
you'd just get neither.
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my father still hears the taliban bombs. not me
I'm too young to remember, my mother heard shots, nights
long after they were gone
.
he heard them, too, the american, and if I spoke english
I'd have told him, we all hear them here
he pointed his gun
.
.
did I really see him? if I spoke english, I'd have asked:
whether she was real, my mother, shot by a soldier
never enlisted
.
or maybe he was shellshock, and what I thought was blood,
and what I thought was mother, was illusion destroyed
by gunshots that never existed
.
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Danaghie, 2012

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