Ishtar and Atropos, Two Poems from the North of the World..

Ishtar and Atropos, Two Poems from the North of the World..

By: Hikmet Elhadj

* In her third published collection of poetry under the title "Mother s Legends", and after her previous two collections, "Maria Lucia" 2012 and "Dear Sven" 2016, the Swedish poet Elizabeth Berchtold plunged into the deep forests of motherhood, among dogs, horses and hares, mothers pushing baby carriages In front of them, in a mixture of legendAnd daily life, to write about the experience of motherhood poetry.Swedish poetry, like Swedish cinema, is incomprehensible, resembles nothing but itself. There are landscapes and animals, violence, pain, tenderness, care, abandonment and loss, woven into and out of each other. Expectations and mores also carry fairy tales. In "Mother s Legends", the legend lies behind a baby s bed, among perhaps -dir-ty sheets, next to the baby s soft skin, smelling of talc, mixed with milk. As T. S. Elliot said: Man is nothing but birth, life and death. This book of poetry is a celebration of the details of life, the Swedish way.
* Below is my translation of two poems from “The Legends of the Mother”, by the Swedish poet Elizabeth Berchtold, published in Stockholm in 2021 by Norstedes Publishing, and it is in order to introduce an important Swedish poet belonging to the postmodern trend, to Arabic readers who are passionate about Scandinavian literature, and may be That the first time.

first poem/

Ishtar.. the goddess of the night

Poem: Elizabeth Berchtold
Translation: Hikmet Elhadj

Our ears hear across frequencies
other sounds,
our ears
that leans with the edge
black foliage
Light up our wireless
With a pink glow..
I love you
And you
Put your hand on your cat s hairy belly
We are all sitting on the edge of the sofa
purple black night bar
Embroidered flower on the image of the eye
And the red throat still dangles in the hand
in small curves
small
in little follies
sad crochet bedspreads
spinning flowers
Plant nerves erupt
From the stitches that enter the air
Meandering replanting holds a thread
Connects the face with the sheets of greenery
The sheets bury our velvet bed
With the remaining hole patched
Behind you is what you call violets
Bring the flowers of blood back to your chest
animal shaped
From the red thread -
touch the buds,
Touch
my buds
_____
I dedicate this translation to those who cannot but respond to the minds of everyone who approaches the name of Ishtar and the shadows of its history and legend and its relationship with Mesopotamia, to the two sons of Iraq, the immortal poets, Badr Shakir Al-Sayyab and Abdul-Wahhab Al-Bayati, who said about Ishtar what does not wither´-or-die.

Al-Sayyab says:
pig s tusk cleaves my hand
And his drowsiness sinks into my liver
And my blood is flowing, gushing
no seed´-or-wheat
but urgent
Ishtar and the robes flutter
and flaunt the herbs around me
of a sole that flickers like lightning
like lightning claws flowing
If it flashes in my veins
Light, it lights up the world for me!
I wouldn t get up! If he had lived!
I would have been watered! Ah, if I were watered!
If only my veins were grapes!
and kiss Ishtar s mouth
It was as if he had wronged him.
apply to me
and dies in the eyes of the slanderer
Me and the darkness.

Al Bayati says:
Crying on the Euphrates Astarte
Searching in its waters for a lost ring
And about a song that dies
Tammouz scarring
O smoke boats
Aisha is back
With winter for the orchard
bare-leaved willow
cry on the Euphrates
Made of tears
keeper of the dead
A crown for love is dead.

Perhaps through this humble translation of the wonderful poem “Ishtar, the Goddess of the Night” by the Swedish poet Elizabeth Berchtold, and the reference to the two poems of the two leading Iraqi poets, Badr Shaker Al-Sayyab and Abdul-Wahhab Al-Bayati, we can cast a dim light on two different creative experiences, by poets from two distant civilizations, from the North of the world even South.


The second poem/

Atropos, the un-summoned with his scissors...

Poem: Elizabeth Berchtold
Translation: Hikmet Elhadj

Sharpen the black volcano knives
Cut fruit juice
gave her
blood and eggs-;-

The mouth of the volcano dreams of insects that
swarms gather
around your wide face
white eye caves
Where the sight sits.

bump
and fall
Tie the fragile thread for the baby
in the flames of darkness
Eye of fire on the other side
Looking for the missing moon scratch.

Spin the womb of the flesh
hot grapes
Just rinse it out at the source
do you live
are you burning
You are burning alive.

cut scissors
slash
thread
pulse
face
fire towards the tongue.
-----------------
I dedicate this translation to my friend, the Tunisian writer Awatef Mahjoub, who previously published a short story entitled "Atropos" in her book "Shadow Player" issued in 2021 by Moment Publications in the United Kingdom, while she -dir-ected a short fiction film about the same story with the same title and from Starring the artist Shaher Al-Masoudi.Perhaps through this humble translation of the poem “Atropos” by the Swedish poet Elisabeth Berchtold, and the reference to the story of “Atropos” by the Tunisian writer Awatef Mahjoub, we can cast a dim light on two different creative experiences of two writers from two different civilizations, from the north of the world to the south.
-------------
Translation notes:/=

* Ishtar:
Ishtar is the Babylonian goddess of love and war, Inanna by the Sumerians, Astarte by the Phoenicians, Aphrodite in ancient Greece, Venus by the Romans. The Sumerians called her the Queen of Paradise, and her temple was located in the city of Warka. .Ishtar is depicted in the form of a naked woman on the back of a lion with an eight-headed crown (stolen by the designer of the famous Statue of Liberty and wearing the head of the Lady of Liberty), a goddess in ancient Babylon who combines pornography and blood crime and has ruled the Middle East for thousands of years, and she is the one addressed by Gilgamesh in his famous epic saying:
* "You are nothing but a stove whose fire is quickly extinguished in the cold."
* You are a door that is of no use in repelling a storm
* You are a palace in which heroes are destroyed
* You are a well that swallows its lid
* You are a handful of tar polluting its bearer
* You are a water bladder that wets its owner
* You re a shoe that stings her foot."
* And Ishtar is what the Bible describes in the Book of Revelation, saying:
* “The great harlot who sits on many waters
with whom the kings of the earth fornicated,
* And people got drunk from the wine of her fornication,
* The woman sitting on a bloody beast,
wrapped in purple,
* Adorned with gold and pearls, and with a golden cup,
* In her hand are the uncleanliness of her fornication,
On her forehead is written the secret of Babylon the Great
´-or-harlots and abominations of the earth.

* Atropos:
Atropos´-or-Isa, in Greek mythology, the goddess of fate and destiny. Its Roman equivalent is morta. She is one of the moirai´-or-destinies in Greek mythology of three sisters personifying fate, their names klotho (the deer´-or-weaver), lachsis (the distributor), and atropos (literally "the unavoidable", meaning death).
In classical mythology, destinies are three deities who control the thread of life. They are the embodiment of fate (or predestination). The first, Klotho, holds the thread of life, the second, Lachises, controls its length, and the third, Atropos, cuts it. They symbolize birth, passing through life, and death, respectively. Traditionally, Klotho has been depicted holding a bobbin, Lachises holding a thread extending from the bobbin, and Atropos cutting the thread with scissors. This is brilliantly embodied in Goya s painting Destinies (also known as Fate´-or-Atropos).
Atropos is considered to be the eldest among the three destinies, destinies,´-or-gods, and it was Atropos who chose the mechanism of death and the end of human life by cutting their threads. The origin of this legend is uncertain, although some call them the daughters of the night. In Plato s Republic, they are considered the daughters of Ananke. It is clear, however, that they only cared about death and also became the power to decide what could happen to humans.
It is possible that Plato was the Greek philosopher behind the name Atropos, as well as many early de-script-ions of the three destinies. But the evidence seems to indicate that Isa was the most frequently used name earlier, with the name Atropos gaining popularity later.
Returning to the theme of Francisco Goya s famous painting, we say, in Goya s Destinies (also known as Atropos) we see the Three Destinies bearing a man, presumably someone whose string has just been cut. Klotho holds a doll instead of a reel, Lachises holds a bottle´-or-lens, and Atropos holds small scissors instead of her large scissors. Destinies are deities, but there is nothing divine in these women as Goya depicts them. They have the same distorted and brutal faces that we saw in many of his paintings in his dark period. The gloomy, moonlit landscape creates a spooky atmosphere. The Atropos,´-or-the Three Destinies, is on display at the Museo del Prado in Madrid.
-Copyright@hikmetElhadj 2022-

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