If you’d like to see the city with trees
suddenly walking through it,
visit in the afternoon, the girls
fresh out of school.

With green and white stripes
on their uniforms,
they spread over the earth
like evergreens.

These two girls link arms as they walk,
and look: a row of girls
chained together like plums
in my grandfather’s field.

And there is one girl—
this poem is for her—
standing all alone by a bookshelf.

She fears nothing:
inside her is a wedding
and a funeral.

She stares into the alphabet
the way a cypress tree stares into a cloud.
The way a cloud stares into a cypress tree.
 

(Translated by Sara Elkamel)