Poems of a Muslim Transgender 5

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Jan 4, 2024
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From Kosova (Kosovo)

Beqir Musliu – The Hidden Pagoda


Translation Adapted from The Sad Branch, Prishtina, Rilindja, 1984.

Beqir Musliu, b. Gjilan, 1945, d. Prishtina, 1996.

Someone built a Pagoda at the summit of the Accursed Mountains
It was locked in a cradle of sadness and wept to be alone
Someone else sliced up the sky chasing after a Dragon gone crazy
I don’t know in which tale of which the walls still talk
Hunters killed many summers with their weapons
The smart ones cried over their vanished loves
The river did not flow downhill It climbed the Pagoda
Men swallowed it with a bitter pain
Swords had unsheathed their green tongues of rage
And sank roots in the black earth like plants
Inside the heroes of suffering remained and the walls sang
Playing with the black snow of lonesome eagles
Someone has cried out at his life of misery in solitude
And sung to the death that approached O! that came
Atop the Pagoda a black panther is driven insane by blood
It ate the flower and the guard in the black terror of beauty
Thunder came with it as if with music the cries of fear
And remained unconquered on the roof of the Accursed Mountains Pagoda

***

SACRED SONG

In the end, after thirty years, I found myself drowning,
Lost in what I once called gulfs
Overtaken by a nameless fear, unable to sleep,
Unable to concentrate, dreaming terrible nightmares,
Believing someone else had written my works:
Where my city lies
Beneath mountains
Where you gave me the key to your body
And all doors and windows opened

Drowning, in therapy three times a week,
I found myself returning, after years
To the greatest of all philosophers, Blessed Raimón Llull,
Once again turning the pages of Blanquerna,
The book that inspired Serra to come to my California,
Where my city lies
Beneath mountains
Where you gave me the key to your body
And your voice spoke from the heart of things

From the streets of San Blas and Tepic, of Granada in Nicaragua,
To Barcelona, Dubrovnik, and Prishtina,
I have asked with Llull, How may I serve my Beloved?
I have asked with Hajji Bektash, Can birds touch the sky?
I have asked with Rashi, How will Israel serve her Beloved?
Where my city lies
Beneath mountains
Where you gave me the key to your body
We were the garden, the rose grew within us

Lost and shipwrecked, a sailor drowning,
Struggling against madness and tyranny,
I ask, with Llull, Dante and Nerval,
Where is she, who is my angel?
I have rained with the rain, I have grown with the grass
Where my city lies
Beneath mountains
Where you gave me the key to your body
We were the rose, we sang with the nightingale

With my head against the bar of madness
I will close my eyes and slip into glossolalia
I will break down and accept the fool’s role
And I will say to the doctor, make me a potion of almonds,
Feed me doves’ flesh, and milk fresh from the nipple,
Where my city lies
Beneath mountains
Where you gave me the key to your body
My Beloved and I will eat pears from the tree

In seeing lightning, in hearing thunder,
In seeing a rainbow in the skies,
After an earthquake, when seeing a comet,
In seeing high mountains, and rivers in their natural course,
In seeing the ocean, beautiful women, and trees in Spring,
Where my city lies
Beneath mountains
Where you gave me the key to your body
My Beloved and I will be blessed and blessed again

Oh Beloved, I have had a good dream,
It is good and it will be good
As is decreed seven times in heaven
It is good and will always be good
Because my tears have turned to dancing
Where my city lies
Beneath mountains
Where you gave me the key to your body
And all men and women were the Beloved

Oh Beloved, I thank you for miracles,
For the clarity of language
For the survival of my Kosova
For the beauty of my beautiful Domna
For my Albanian teachers and friends
Where my city lies
Beneath mountains
Where you gave me the key to your body
In Kosova light we are the Beloved

(The key was her nipples.)

( . )( . )
 
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