When Miriam Emerges, and: Litany for a Prolonged Dream

When Miriam Emerges, and: Litany for a Prolonged Dream Joyce Mansour (bio) Translated by C. Francis Fisher (bio) When Miriam Emerges I'm backHarvest is overThe yellow ears of morningStand against the doorIrritating problemsOf patinaNo more picking olivesOn the hills of adulteryNo more passive pleasuresI can't fight narcosisAsleep like mud in enclosed gardensMy sex gleams with a great bitter thirstThe exquisite yawn of deathWhy do I know sadness without understanding itWithout the medlar pit swollen with rustic bloodTo be held like a widow's lastBetween my fingers drenched in lightHow to satisfy my craze for freshnessNo passionNo old punishmentThat does not wear vice's uniformI fall to the ground with great sealike movementsAnd swirls of cobblestones with the soundOf drumsI fall and I rise and the surface of the city End Page 122 Cannot be far from misery and timeI came back too soonO son of my maternal flameHello End Page 123 Litany for a Prolonged Dream The streets of El Kantara are unrecognizable at duskThe people of death have thirty-nine filthy fingersBraided on their foreheadsCrowns of fathersOver there a tomb looks like a moving walkwayIn reverseThe dead travel sittingTo the eastThe desertThe dust soft like an open stomachThe clarity of a golden voice on edgeThe toothless night the savannaThe obsession ofThe North StarThe gusty laughter of the child rattleThe ornamental explosion of the eye which burstsUnder the bootThe thick juice of corruption in colonial vermeilThe churchDeath's fingerprints are pale and lack raysThe midday wind rises in the cafésMy mother's eyes count a rosary of testiclesSomewhere in the forestPriapic hanged men sneezeThe scarab buries his ball beneath the livid earthWinter is prince of olive End Page 124 Joyce Mansour joyce mansour (1928–1986) was born in England to Jewish-Egyptian parents, grew up in Cairo, and settled in Paris in the 1950s. She published sixteen books of poetry in her lifetime and is considered one of the most important female Surrealist writers. C. Francis Fisher c. francis fisher is a writer and translator. Her first book of translations, In the Glittering Maw: Selected Poems of Joyce Mansour, is forthcoming in May 2024. Copyright © 2024 Yale University