A Woman Who Was Pounding Salt

In the corner of her eternal kicthen

a woman was pounding salt in her mortar.

“I will create hope,” she said, “on the black stone.”

Smoke was never brief. Its ceiling was the color of the world

in Jeremiah’s dreams.

She herself mused on fish in an aquarium, swimming,

like lazy balloons unaware of their own painted sign

in the sky. “They are the ones who dreaming,”

the said to herself.

Even if she had her own dreams. She dreamt of mounds of flour,

drizzling, like grumbling. On as grassland. Half a dozen

people running, escaping, from the sun. “They are all my

children,” she said. “All are my children.”

But the did not know where they went, because thay had not returned since. The

youngest, from some Russian town, never

wrote. The eldest had simply vanished. The other four has sent

only one letter with a single sentence,

“We are but traitors, Ma.”

Perhaps there was still a young woman left, on a distant prayer rug, (or maybe that was

just a dream returning,)

who did not know her. She often communicated with the silent

language of a factory smoke. She dared not know who she was.

She dared not know.

In the corner of her eternal kitchen

a woman was pounding salt in her mortar.

Oleh :

Goenawan Mohammad