Ode
Mona Musaddar
O, World! I want to speak. Who will listen?
My speech is all silence and glances.
Who will read?
Who wants to buy sadness and silence? My sadness is for sale.
Do not panic! Not all of it. One pound will be enough for you all.
It offers dark fantasies when you shut your eyes,
a jolt out of sleep, an emergency landing, maybe a morning bruise.
Who’s interested in buying such sadness?
Instead of a mundane good morning, is there a hand to draw the curtain?
Could loss trade numb nature for a loving one?
O, World! My sight’s clouded and I want to speak.
But my soul’s sinking heart melts before broken glances.
O, Worlds! I want neither consolations nor caresses. I want to understand
the human who’s curled in a nook of my body, who’s covered in a cloak of loss
and each time grows emptier, quieter.
Today, with an extinguished heart, I hugged a dove and it died.
Have I committed a crime, World? Or has the court lost its senses, too?
O, World, I want to speak, but I don’t want anyone to listen.
I announce that the mourning auction is now suspended, forever.
O, World! I do not want you.
I want some sorrowless sleep, a heart without loss. What a dream!
O, Night! I want nightmares to stop chasing after my father.
O, Heart! Attend to your own fragments, befriend them.
O, World! Do not turn on consolation. Kill off all attachments.
It is just another lie.
O, World! Don’t despise our sadness and solitude.
Leave us and find other prey.
O, World! I do not want you.
Translated by Mosab Abu Toha