Maiden’s Tower

By TARA SKURTU

 

We pass a lighthouse and you tell me the legend—
a seer, an emperor, his daughter, the snakebite;
the tower he built to keep her at the edge of the sea—
when an old woman passes us on the ferry,
sniffs us twice, You are in love, I smelled it!
and last night on the island, over fresh fish
and a pitcher of ice-cloudy raki, I asked how
many words for love in your language:
This question cannot be answered—and we
laughed and walked the sidewalk along the sea
until I found a ladder and climbed down
to wade between continents in the icy dark—
You have to have the end in mind
when you read the poem, Lloyd once said,
and ours is in days; I knew it before I came,
but I believe in trying all probabilities
of a possible history, especially
those that aren’t likely—it wasn’t love
the woman smelled, that couldn’t keep
the maiden from the snake sliding
into a basket of fruit on her birthday,
but learning again to read what’s been
written: this moment, its particular
probability spray-painted on a wall between
the bougainvilleas and the dumpster:
LIFE IS ONE HOPE, and you translate hop—
of all the answerless questions, questionless
answers: answers that can only be questioned.

 

Tara Skurtu, author of The Amoeba Game and the upcoming collection Faith Farm, is a two-time Fulbright grantee and recipient of a Robert Pinsky Global Fellowship and two Academy of American Poets Prizes. She is the founder of International Poetry Circle and a steering committee member of Writers for Democratic Action.

[Purchase Issue 24 here.]

Maiden’s Tower

Related Posts

black and white photo of a slim man's body, arm outstretched from the bbody

LitFest 2025 Excerpts: Video Poems by Paisley Rekdal

PAISLEY REKDAL
On the seventh day / of the seventh month, magpies / bridge in a cluster of black and white // the Sky King crosses to meet his Queen, time tracked / by the close-knit wheeling / of stars. I watch. You come // to me tonight, drunk on wine / and cards, nails ridged black / with opium

Mantra 5

KRIKOR BELEDIAN
from channel to channel / the lengthening beauty of shadows that float and bow down / and suck at the stones and planks / of the damp, bitter fog / of loneliness, / stone horses let loose their golden neighs / and the waters transform to / stained glass

Book cover of Concerning the Angels by Rafael Alberti

January 2025 Poetry Feature #2: Rafael Alberti in Translation

RAFAEL ALBERTI
Who are you, tell us, who do not remember you / from earth or from heaven? // Your shadow—tell us—is from what space? / What light, say it, has reached / into our realm? // Where do you come from, tell us, / shadow without words, / that we don’t remember you?