SINGING BIRD
Today I was reminded by a friend in Antigua, Guatemala, about a huipil book I made a few years ago. Judy Sadlier, who I met last time I visited that amazing San Miguelish kind of city, is helping me put together an exhibition, tentatively titled The Huipil Project. In looking at my website, she had come across Singing Bird, an homage to murdered Afghani poet Nadia Anjuman.
In her email, Judy said she has a thing for larks, and wondered if I might send her something more about the poem. Reading that email, I was called right back to the moment I first heard about Nadia and started researching her life, her death, her words, now memorialized forever rather than silenced.
THE FALL OF A LARK
Nadia Anjuman
translation by T.S. Kerrigan
My wings are closed... I cannot fly,
She wrote before she plummeted,
A creature less of earth than sky,
A lark that bullies killed with stones,
She fell to earth, her music stilled,
A broken heap of shattered bones.
What gift like hers endures for long
Where ignorance flings stones at art,
And bullies put an end to song?
To choose to sing's an act of will,
She had to know instinctively
A singing bird's the first they kill.
Nadia was martyred, killed by her husband for her love of words. This story prompted me to read Christina Lamb's book Sewing Circles of Herat, which was the name of an underground school for women who wanted to read and write when it became forbidden to do so in Afghanistan. Re-creating and re-membering stories of silenced women like this have become my life's work, and the huipil continues to be the perfect container for them.
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| SINGING BIRD, altered book, mixed media, 2009 Galeria 6, Mineral de Pozos |
In her email, Judy said she has a thing for larks, and wondered if I might send her something more about the poem. Reading that email, I was called right back to the moment I first heard about Nadia and started researching her life, her death, her words, now memorialized forever rather than silenced.
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| (private collection, San Francisco) |
THE FALL OF A LARK
Nadia Anjuman
translation by T.S. Kerrigan
My wings are closed... I cannot fly,
She wrote before she plummeted,
A creature less of earth than sky,
A lark that bullies killed with stones,
She fell to earth, her music stilled,
A broken heap of shattered bones.
What gift like hers endures for long
Where ignorance flings stones at art,
And bullies put an end to song?
To choose to sing's an act of will,
She had to know instinctively
A singing bird's the first they kill.
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| Book cover, SINGING BIRD |
Comments
What a beautiful post, thank you for the poem and for your work. I am going to tell my sister about your blog, I think she will love it.
Laurel