To Christina whom I forgot to kiss

Satan will die tomorrow
Before he browses the newspaper at the seaside
-as usual every morning-
Once he sips at his cup of coffee.
The world will be boring without him,
Because
I will not find an excuse
To claim that I'm more kind
Than my evil friends!
But
I will whisper to my friend:
You can raise your finger now
To touch the swallow, hidden under my jaw
With no fear,
For he died!
Our mothers
Were lying to us
Saying he used to sleep under our dirty fingernails.

And Christina died too
The day before yesterday
Nobody noticed
No woman mourned her.

She died before lighting the Christmas tree
In front of the ebony frame that carries a poem written by The Alexandrian about her eyes
Half a century ago.

Yes, yes!
Women die too
-Even they were
Cavafy’s lovers-
With no noise
With no birds to rustle against the
window pane
With no harem
Though women
Look prettier in mourning dress.

We only have to
Silently sit in Elite cafe
To calculate the body’s length and width
For a coffin suitable for a man
For we are more refined than the rough fishermen
Who don’t care about the fishes’ bodies
When they throw them in the basket
With no respect of the magnitude of death

We’ll arrange a decent funeral
Suitable for the eternal human companion
The master
Who paved a place for us
on this earth:
My father will come
Who was seduced by the deceased
To sit under my mother’s balcony for two years
And my mother
Who kissed the physician’s hand
To put a letter on Omar’s tongue
And Omar who built Noah’s ark
and drowned it
And Faust
Al-Gabalawy
The shoemaker
Who scattered nails
in our street
And our street,
In which the old Greek ladies
lived
Around As-Sarayat hospital
But as for me,
I’ll be the woman who receives the condolences
For being
Her greatest sin.

***********
© Translated by Sayed Gouda