Maggie Dubris

A translation by Maggie Dubris of the Turkish poet Lala Muldar’s “The Yellowing” is included in Murat Nemet-Nejat’s, Eda: An Anthology of Contemporary Turkish Poetry, available now from Talisman House.

RAINBIRD
©Maggie Dubris

I woke up this morning with the sun in my eyes
Rising from the desert night
Walked in the heat of the red sunrise
Rising from the desert night
Through the smell of the sage, and the prickly pear
Rainbirds singing in the desert air
It’s a hot day coming, but I don’t care
Cause there’ll be rain in the desert tonight

Now, some say the stars are the finest thing
Shining in the desert at night
Some say the stars are the finest thing
Shining to the end of the sky
Yeah, some say the stars are the finest thing
But they never prayed to hear the rainbird sing
Down on their knees for what the rainbird brings
Rain in the desert tonight

I woke up this morning to a rainbird’s song
Rising from the desert night
It’s a hot day coming, but it won’t be long
Be long before the raindrops fly
A man, with his hair hanging down so low
Drives a hundred miles an hour across the desert roads
The rainbird’s calling, he’s coming home
There’ll be rain in the desert tonight

Falling in the desert at night Falling to the end of the sky
Falling in the desert at night Falling to the end of the sky

Now, some say the moon is the finest thing
Rolling cross the desert at night
Some say the moon is the finest thing
Rolling to the end of the sky
Yeah, some say the moon is the finest thing
But they never prayed to hear the rainbird sing
Down on their knees for what the rainbird brings
Rain in the desert tonight

Sitting in the bus it was like we could be anywhere. The back doors were open, framing the medics standing around, firemen and a gray smoky field. It was almost like a regular MCI.

Then I looked over at the river for the drowned sailors statue and couldn’t see it. There was only the rush of the serpentine waale, that sunny fall afternoon. Running through the very center of me, destroying me from the inside out.

Pliny the Elder recorded more than 20,000 facts that survive to this day. Here are some of them: The earth is divided into three continents; Africa, Asia, and Urupaa. Al has just almost gotten killed. Light travels much faster than sound. Man alone of all living creatures has been given grief.

It’s Tuesday and I’m cradled between the stony ghar. My legs hurt. My feet belong to someone else. A fireman helps me walk on a beam across a pool of water. He wears a coat striped red, gold and blue. The market-stalls are jumbled high with cloth and fruits and nuts.

I have to make some kind of order out of things. So I sort oxygen tanks and scoop stretchers into separate piles. The Dr. does not come. Every time I bend my neck, a lightning bolt shoots down my spine. Suddenly I rranda.

I never wanted to live through something like this. I wanted to be born in Europe a hundred years ago and hang out in cafes, a poet in the fire-age of poetry. Catapulted into the modern world on the searing wings of the Avant-garde.

But I couldn’t feel if the water was tod or yakh on my legs. I had no idea how deep it would get. I found an ancient fruit called the Apple of Sodom that exploded into ashes the moment I touched it. All that remained was a handful of rind and a few filaments.

I set out for lmar khaate with the hopes of restoring my health. In this choice of dangers I resolve for the fields. I want to be in a place with other damaged people. I cross a waadi. Pass under a bridge. I can’t see anything that isn’t in flames or smashed. Caught in the blowball of a dandelion. All the planes are grounded. The streets packed with brightly painted busses and camel caravans.

What I want or don’t want doesn’t matter anymore. If I want to forget, I can’t. If I want to remember, I can’t. Only in flashes. Or sometimes, as if I were looking down from a very high mountain, at a city being buried in ash, miles below.

Armaan! Seven World Trade Center swadzem. I was with my old partner Al when it came down. There was a terrible loud noise. We got hit by the cloud. We put our shirts up over our faces. Al had his arm around me. We closed our eyes. Steve was already gone.

Who would lose zmaa? I had never noticed before. The planes as they dove produced a nighthawk sound; the sound of a spinning wheel turning.

The French poet Guillame Apollinaire suffered a shrapnel wound to the temple during the Great War and lost his ability to feel love. He died two years later in the world-wide flu pandemic. Federico Garcia Lorca was executed by nationalist partisans at the beginning of the Spanish Civil War. Albert Camus had TB, and fought with the resistance in Nazi occupied France.

(A Mummer’s Play Starring Some Extinct Birds And Their Arch-Enemies)
by Maggie Dubris

FLOCK
A world a world of birds unfurls
Its wings and dives and sings and swirls
And flies in circles, swoops in squares
And dodges through the old cross-hairs
And if you doubt, you won’t doubt long
Step in, little wren, and sing your song

STEPHEN ISLAND WREN
I’m a weak-winged wren, a specimen
Where I was born I met my end
Met my end? No! Met my match
I’ll send you back to the briar patch

LIGHTHOUSE KEEPER’S CAT
How can you send me to the briar patch?
You see my fur is a thorny mist
My body made of yowl and hiss
My paws and claws are tiger-jaws
So how’s about a fight?
(cross swords)
Bow, Dip Wings, and FIGHT!!!!

(fight)

STEPHEN ISLAND WREN
Well, that old cat’s a new doormat
But what will become of me?
He said, “how’s about a fight?’
Why should I deny it?
I pecked him into mince and yowls
And chopped him up and smoked his bowels
One life here, one life there
Nine lives gone and none to spare
Is there a doctor, or a quack about?
Here, let me wave around a few dollars
Hey! Boy! Garcon! Get over here. Toot sweet!

QUACK
Call me what you will but never call me late for dinner.
With my cheap valise and my natty skimmer
And though my wit is quite petite
I’ve more than enough to fleece this tweet!

STEPHEN ISLAND WREN
Are you the quack I ordered?

QUACK
Yes, yes, I’ve been called that on occasion.

STEPHEN ISLAND WREN
How did you come to be the quack?

QUACK
By international nomination! Hand over the scratch.

STEPHEN ISLAND WREN
How international?

QUACK
I’m renowned in Aukland, Krautland, Mauritania, and the Isle of Bird
Now here I am, back on Stephen’s Island.
And a nasty little isle it is. Quack Quack.

LIGHTHOUSE KEEPER’S CAT
Oh my poor fur.

QUACK
Did someone say something? Oh. It’s the rug.

LIGHTHOUSE KEEPER’S CAT
I’m not the rug, I’m a patient.

QUACK
A patient! Just what I needed.
I have a bottle of formic ethers I want to get rid of.
Loosen up your jaw
And let me pour it down your maw
Perhaps you’ll live. Or die again.
One never knows . . .

LIGHTHOUSE KEEPER’S CAT
(beginning to smolder)
Oh my poor fur.

QUACK
Fret not, I forgot. I have also in my possession
A bottle called, “if this won’t cure you, nothing will.”
Now, loosen up your jaw, and let me pour it . . .

( the cat dissolves in a hiss of steam as the liquid flows into his mouth)

QUACK
Yes,yes. Well, there’s no point in morbidly inhabiting the past. Let’s move on.
I have in my possession wing crutches for the lame
Cormorant spectacles, braces for the broad-billed—

CAPTAIN COOK’S COOK
I’m Captain Cook’s Cook. Greetings, heathens.
Tempest-tossed and likely lost
I’ve washed up on your shore
Yes, I’m the one who’s here to slay
The mighty wren. “Avast,” I cry
Before this play has reached its end
I’ll toast him in my frying pan!

( fight)

STEPHEN ISLAND WREN
The cook got cooked, his goose is gone
But what will become of me?
He challenged me to a slaying match
Why should I deny it?

FLOCK
A good brave wren, we must agree
But might love bend his mighty knee?

THE BLUE DOVE OF SAINT HELENA
A dear friend of Napoleon
I’ve blown in on a wayward wind
Oh my! What’s that? A vanquished cat!
Be still my heart! A cooked cook tart!
I’ll sit and preen, until I’m seen
By the valiant bird who did this deed.

FLOCK
His wings were weak, but his heart was strong
Her feathers blue, on which he flew
And found the sky, and she, his song
On Stephen’s Isle,
On one spring day
In years long gone.