The Astronauts in the Garden Grass

The Astronauts in the Garden Grass

Arriving as foreigners in a country foreign to us both, I met my friend from Pakistan who in his land wrote stories

And the one that happened to us I write below

There I sat
On the garden grass
Listening to the shouts
Of childrenWhen they came
Over my way
Moon, I told them
To say

And when they said
Moon, I told them
I was the moon
And to come

My friend from Pakistan gave the same story a different shape
“The Woman who Brought the Stars” which is me
in the sky

They divided Pakistan, I don’t know if two stories were ever written
So perhaps my saying these few things means much

Now you’ll see, I’ll weave even more with these, as listening to the foreign language I deeply spoke our own, and came to understand how difficult it is for a person to name things truly

And it’s another thing,
as they said, for you to come to my words

They call you Eleni
A leaner
Selene who wanders alone
She there
And you
Sitting alone the aloner
Eleni

Hear that?
It’s the child’s tongue I’m speaking that we all share

Because the other girls
Won’t play with her

So I did the same in our words putting in all that I heard because these things multiplied in the hearts of men sitting like a weight both elsewhere and here