Poem by Hélène Cardona

Patience

Gratitude knocks at my door, melts the armor. 
My mother waits in the wild grass garden, 
Broker of time and space,
Silent witness, allure like wind, billowing devotion.

My mother waits in the wild grass garden, 
Consults the universe, magnificent,
Silent witness, allure like wind, billowing devotion, 
Halo of white for body.


Consulting the universe, magnificent, 
Memories waft in the tea colored landscape, 
Halo of white for body,
Glide from the sweetness of joy.


Memories waft in the tea colored landscape, 
Innovative, transform into wolves,    
Glide from the sweetness of joy, 
Find their pack, eccentric muzzles.


Innovative, I transform into a wolf     
Now horse merging into leopard,   
I find my pack, eccentric muzzle
Leaping out into the world.


Now horse merging into leopard,
Gratitude knocks at my door, melts the armor, 
Leaping out into the world,
Broker of time and space.

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Hélène Cardona is the author of six books, most recently Life in Suspension and Dreaming My Animal Selves (both from Salmon Poetry); and the translations Beyond Elsewhere (Gabriel Arnou-Laujeac, White Pine Press), winner of a Hemingway Grant, Ce que nous portons (Dorianne Laux, Éditions du Cygne); as well as Walt Whitman’s Civil War Writings for WhitmanWeb. The Birnam Wood, her translation of El Bosque de Birnam (Consell Insular d’Eivissa) by her father José Manuel Cardona is forthcoming from Salmon Poetry in 2018.
She holds a Master’s in American Literature from the Sorbonne and has contributed to The London Magazine, Washington Square Review, World Literature Today, Poetry International, The Brooklyn Rail’s InTranslation, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Asymptote, and The Warwick Review. Acting credits include Chocolat, Jurassic World, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, The Hundred-Foot Journey, etc. For Serendipity, she co-wrote with Peter Chelsom & Alan Silvestri the song Lucienne, which she also sang.

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