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Freya Stark
(born in Paris, 1893 – 1993)
Already in childhood some evil Asolo fairy –
more precisely an odd accident –
changed the fair geography of her face.
Expressed in cuneiform, that brutality
translates into something else.
It wasn’t just the factory machine
that seized her golden hair with a bow
and then her face as well.
It was a stab from the heavy magnetic needle of the world,
a magnetic knife carving one’s face like Holy Bread,
Arabian spikes of Orient, thorns of destiny.
For those scars furrowed her future journeys:
southeast, northeast, in all directions,
the poetry of sand,
dance steps on the face of this little blue planet
among the gaseous giants.
For years after Italy’s north,
her nostrils inhaled the ancient languages like narghile fumes,
Latin, Persian, Turkish – uttering the names of months
by their lunar calendars,
she flew, sailed, wrote, and drew on camels’ backs.
This woman scarcely ever hungers or droops,