I wrote in my mother’s tongue, and not even
she could understand, but what she listened to
sounded Arabic Turkish German to her.
Each letter, each drop that I savoured,
that I drunk from her lips,
came out of mine as a bonedry babble,
dumbish, half-blind, deaf. She
looked, without recognizing him, at
a lost, drowned,
back-from-the-dead son. Each letter,
each comma was just
a pin with a butterfly.
Translated by Riccardo Duranti
From Amurusanza, Coazìnzola Press, Mompeo, 2016
Poem selected by Emilia Mirazchiyska, series’ editor
