MY ARM HURTS

When one of them dies you realize

Parents are like limbs:

They don’t stop hurting amputated.

Moaning theatrically to tell the world

How long suffering she has been,

The one who hasn’t died draws up

At the threshold to her chamber,

One hand on the peeling door frame

Apparently to keep standing.

I can only see the back of her

As I go on pacing the hall.

*

Cramps, burns, festering lacerations…

How could I have saved my arm from

The battering of the years?

It is not that I like the old crutch;

I just feel sorry for all that it has suffered

Which makes it a terrible burden,

Unwanted and perpetually distressed.

That must be why I tend to it,

Crank my neck till it hurts

To excavate the knots of pain

In its furrows of tired sinew.

*

Suddenly my mother crosses over,

No longer moaning. And before I stop,

I see her hand hovering to the ceiling.

Lighter than all the burdens in the world,

She reminds me: I, who wished him dead,

Will never be rid of my father.

*

© Youssef Rakha

Rewritten from Arabic by the author