Our poet in translation for today is Afghanistan’s Shakila Azizzada. She’s known for her delicate and at the same time passionate love poems – check out the not-exactly-racy-but-still-sizzling poem “Cat Lying in Wait,” along with several others, at the link above.
Today’s prompt encouraged close description of a place or an object with a surprise endline that seemingly doesn’t connect or fit to the object/place description. I’m hoping you’ll achieve. An abstract, philosophical kind of statement closing out a poem that is otherwise intensely focused on physical, sensory details.
Let’s have a go!
I found this challenging, although using my empty coffee cup was perhaps not the most inspiring object on the desk.
I have chosen to share part of the middle of the poem and the endline – I guess this challenge doesn’t translate without reading the full poem. I am not perfectly happy with it at this stage though.
The base of the glass contains
puddles of condensation
residue of hot waking liquid.
A shallow circle of tan brown moves
when disturbed.
the day patches duller than swirling bulb.
