Carole Abourjeili, author of this week’s moving poem, began writing poetry in Arabic and French while living in Lebanon, then also in English after she migrated to Australia. She has been published in Australia and the US.
Chanteuse
Dedicated to the blue-eyed beauty who was killed by her family – an ‘honour killing’, Iran refugee camp, 1991.
Her ballad aroused the light of day
Thus swayed the blooms their rosy May
Her soft breathing of her sin
Enchanted ballads echoed within
With eyes that shamed the blue Divine
Sans thirst she versed her freedom wine
Two dwellings in the womb of her mortal earth
Renounced within her deserted hearth
As heavens hymned an ardent tune
She set her darkness a silent moon
‘Foist yourselves upon my breath
The dual gift of my jeunesse¹
Thus Darkness chanted her holy dust
Her sang² befell
Her honour was thrust
Torched beside her sinful shame
The dancing myths
A firing flame
Her earth hath chanted its strange misgiving
Like vermin toxic of thus living
She danced her hymn
The Sublime Elohim³
Her sang hath chanted her demise
Blind Instruments of Paradise.
1. Youth, French
2. Blood, French
3. God, Hebrew
A chanson is a lyric-driven French song, concentrating on the secular, the temporal. A female singer specialising in chansons is known as a chanteuse.
Carole Abourjeili has a BA in anthropology and languages. In 2009, she published Little Thommo Big World, a primary school reader in English and Arabic, illustrated by Nicole Beaumont.
Readers’ original and unpublished poems up to 30 lines can be emailed, with postal address, to [email protected]. A poetry book will be awarded to each contributor.
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