Entering

I read how candles made from human fat
glow brightest, how everything
can be seen in that light,
hunger, you.

I remember and forget your face.
it may be what Enheduanna,
Sumerian moon priestess,
wrote:
            my beautiful face is dust.

a river sings near your grave.
I tell you of a man
wrapping his body in newspaper
before putting on clothes.
he spoke of a bombed kitchen wall,
women struck by glass while giving birth.

in Belgrade, most have war stories.
in Sarajevo, it is colder beneath a sky
severed by minarets
but the women also know how to hold soil
for harvest
                   and burial.

I speak to you, but perhaps you’ve become 
a distant shorebird,
and the shore is also you,
but I am the sea,
salt-stitched, saying your name
though it does not pearl in the seashell of my ear. 

 
Triin Paja

Triin Paja is the author of three collections of poetry in Estonian and a recipient of the Betti Alver Literary Award, the Juhan Liiv Poetry Prize, and the Värske Rõhk Poetry Award. Her English poetry has received a Pushcart Prize and has appeared or is appearing in Black Warrior Review, The Cincinnati Review, Prairie Schooner, Rattle, and elsewhere. Her poetry has been translated into Czech, Finnish, Russian, Lithuanian, Latvian, and Slovenian.

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