to the sea
By Aracelis Girmay

You who cannot hear or cannot know
the terrible intricacies of our species, our minds,
the extent to which we have done
what we have done, and yet the depth to which
we have loved
what we have
loved — 

the hillside
at dawn, dark eyes
outlined with the dark
sentences of  kohl,
the fūl we shared
beneath the lime tree at the general’s house
after visiting Goitom in prison for trying to leave
the country (the first time),
the apricot color of camels racing
on the floor of  the world
as the fires blazed in celebration of  Independence.

How dare I move into the dark space of  your body
carrying my dreams, without an invitation, my dreams
wandering in ellipses, pet goats or chickens
devouring your yard and shirts.

Sea, my oblivious afterworld,
grant us entry, please, when we knock,
but do not keep us there, deliver
our flowers and himbasha bread.
Though we can’t imagine, now, what
our dead might need,
and above all can’t imagine it is over
and that they are, in fact, askless, are
needless, in fact, still hold somewhere
the smell of coffee smoking
in the house, please,
the memory of joy
fluttering like a curtain in an open window
somewhere inside the brain’s secret luster
where a woman, hands red with henna,
beats the carpet clean with the stick of a broom
and the children, in the distance, choose stones
for the competition of stones, and the summer
wears a crown of  beles in her green hair and the tigadelti’s
white teeth and the beautiful bones of Massawa,
the gaping eyes and mouths of its arches
worn clean by the sea, your breath and your salt.
Please, you,

being water too,
find a way into the air and then
the river and the spring
so that your waters can wash the elders,
with the medicine of the dreaming of their children,
cold and clean.