What’s that whiteness risen on the mountain?
Is it the whiteness of wintery snow?
Or is it the whiteness of white-bright wings?
A swan-flock settled at the mountain spring?
No – that’s no whiteness of wintery snow
No – that’s no whiteness of brightly white wings
That is the tent of high Hasan Aga
The law-man, sword-man, where he is bleeding.
Bound to obey, his sister, his mother
His ev’ry acolyte bows at the bed
Of the near dead chieftan, all but for one
In her reticence. For this woman, once
Lover to him, the wounded man had words:
I no longer know you. You have no place
In my house, no place among my people. The very manner of this tough telling
Disintegrates the isolated wife.
A tattoo of horses, fast at the door!
Stallions come from merciless Hasan
Chasing her into the air, into death!
Up to their mother her two daughters call:
Dear gentle mother, come back to yourself!
These are not horses from Hasan Aga
This is that Pintorović, your brother! The cast-away wife of Hasan Aga
Threw herself into her brother’s embrace:
See, brother, see the shaming done to me!
I, the mother to five of his children
I am dishonoured and mother of none! The brother was silent. He said nothing.
He was prepared. From a secret pocket
He drew a document folded in silk
The writ to sever his sister’s marriage
The family welcome back to its own.
At the very telling of this tough writ
To her sons’ bare faces she said goodbye
And goodbye to her daughters’ reddened cheeks
But as for the baby stuck to her breast
That could not be so easily severed
But for the brother who slapped the hungry
Mouth away and gathered up his trauma’d
Sister into the speed of their flight-pace
Back to their haven, their family home.
Few days had passed in that family home
So few that no day of rest had come for
The precious lady before prospective
Husbands came courting from ev’ry quarter
Highest of whom was Imoski’s Cadi.
The lady knelt down before her brother:
O brother, you cannot feel what I feel!
You give me away as though I were free!
My children are breaking my mother’s heart
To see them unmothered will undo me! But, for her pain, the man he felt nothing
Set as he was on a high-caste wedding.
Again she begged her go-between brother
To write a carefully worded letter
To send ahead to the husband-to-be:
Sir, with good grace, I consider myself
As a widow, and all I ask of you
Is to furnish your Suati gentlemen
With a veil, a veil fit for a widow.
Only thus can I pass the Aga’s house
Only thus avoid those unmothered children. When the Cadi saw what she had written
He assembled his Suati gentlemen
He sent his gentlemen to the widow
The gentlemen went to fetch the widow
And brought her forth with great festivity.
But when that procession passed Aga’s house
From up high, her two daughters spied her out
Her two sons, quick off the mark, shouted out
Keen to be able to greet their mother:
Dear gentle mother, come back to yourself!
Sit with us at the family table! When the wife of Hasan Aga heard that
She called to her Suati consort to stop:
God is with us, my good Suati consort
Reign in the horses at this very door
That we honour these unmothered children! The horses reign in at that very door
To honour the children with generous
Gifts: for each son a gold embossèd belt
For each daughter a silk embroidered gown
And around her helpless one-time baby
She wound a brocade for a future coat.
When the hero Hasan Aga saw that
He spoke in this manner to his two sons:
Run to your father. You are my children.
There is nothing gentle in your mother
Nothing to be found in her untrue heart. When that was heard by Hasan Aga’s wife
She whitened to white, she fell to the ground
And flung from herself all she had suffered
Her white-bright sadness, her whiteness, her life.
Prevod Hasanaginice Angusa Reida objavljamo po rokopisu antologije Outland, ki jo je pustil v objavo pred odhodom iz Slovenije. Vanjo so vključeni še Dane Zajc, Maja Haderlap, Željko Perović, Marjan Strojan, Győző Csorba, Sándor Rákos, Kukorelly Endre in János Térey
