Saadi Yousef
 
The girl who will sing her poems in the birds’ tongues
Is climbing up her six steps,
 Knotting a cheap silk as her theatre screen
Laughing.
I give her the thread’s end.
She is joking with me:
You adore my legs!
I laugh.
In the tent’s entrance the wooden box
where birds are waiting for their birth moment
Out of thirsty beaks, broken wings and branches junk that will be painted.
In the wooden box a crown of golden paper.
The scoundrel king is waiting for the finger.
The sun is low.
The garden listens to the pulse of the child’s excited scream.
You are standing as an usher.
The joys and the songs and the trampling down of the crown
Will begin in a moment.

The girl who climbed up is resting now.
Children who attended the show will soon be back to the cruel world
Where kings are still kings,
And the girl who makes the birds talks
Dwells in a house of nowhere.

Translated by the author.
London   24/09/06