Trinity Journal of Literary Translation
Online: A House Made of Stone
(1) From night to night, curtains wink and disappear into dust. The maid knocks on the door: “Two teas?” A brown knee, soft to the touch of hands and lips soothes every feeling, calms every memory, except the one no caress can smooth over: a house made of stone. Geraniums sprouted every spring around its white stairs. (Is it still there on the hill, raising up its three arches? Or has it become a pile of rubble, a home for rats and spiders, stinging nettles crawling where geraniums once grew?) The hotel maid will knock on the door to discover two bare breasts. I will put on my coat and head out to the portico, the stairs, the pavement, to the barefoot vendors waving their lottery tickets: “Five thousand dinars! Five thousand dinars!”
119
trans. Emily Drumsta
(Variations on a Theme)
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