Female from the East

No picture framed am I to draw desire,
No inchoate creature to be hidden
Or auctioned off according to convention.
A woman am I, filled with existence
With the right to break out from my allotted role
As from the bands around my neck
To rouse a dormant consciousness
To burn the rotting roses overhanging my path.
In my language I am both verb and subject
With a pioneer’s right to trek on
Towards the frontier lands
My face wide open to the Sun,
Yet pregnant still with the legacy of injustice.
From my womb issues the genesis of History
So why expect me to remain a mere kiss upon its lips.

I am not obedient daughter
Nor docile sister
Nor servile wife
Nor submissive mother
I am the essence of humanity, not just a rib
Existence trickles from my springs
My tenderness fertilizes deserts
Yet, I hunger still for justice.
Female am I
Earth is my mother
In me ferments the vintage of passion
In my fields sprouts the wheat of tomorrow
And on my heights trees rear up proudly.
Female am I
Not deficient
To be completed and possessed by the male.
Together as equals must we plant and harvest
The tender fruits of our sowing.
I am mother
I am wife
I am sister
I am daughter
Yet was, am and shall be
A woman without epithets.

I am no sumptuous beauty worth the mention
While it remains mute
I am no free fantasy which comes to mind
But imprisoned in the definition of femininity
I am no statue to be touched by fingers of desire,
Then broken in a surge of male anger.
I am a woman kneaded by water of truth and salt of suffering
I am the companion whose presence is not limited to her body
I trace my path with my reason and clear it with my hands
No one can usurp my decision
No hand may burn my books
Nor seal my eyelids
Nor break my pen
I tolerate no master sowing chains,
Deploying soldiers in my path
Or burying alive my dreams at their birth.

From the East am I
My East westering in affliction
They suckled me on milk fortified with fear
My food inoculated with the salt of imperfection
Classified weak
I smother my voice in my chest
Fire smoulders under my skin
Accused I live
And will probably die reprimanded.
Why so
While the fields of struggle know me
The heart of revolution and its hidden brain I am
And both its hoarse cry and its bleeding chest.
I am no silent onlooker
The action takes place not before my eyes
But in the pulse of my arteries.
I have paid the price of transgression
Murdered, violated and bleeding,
In tears, terror and hunger
Captive and subjugated.
I, the hero of life saga,
Was forced into the mold of victim of their drama.
I am the cry of liberty
And could be the rightful author of a different story.

From the East am I
An East whose glory froze in history
And fell asleep
Whose children are born elderly
Whose men make war
Then reward themselves with the halo of infamous defeat.
From the East am I;
An East lost in injustice and darkness
Where banquets proliferate
Yet the buds of dreams are snapped off,
Whose men boast of their crimes
Yet women pay their penance.

The East is westering
Its trajectory has reached the horizon
The East is westering
So, rouse yourself woman,
Woman, rouse yourself!
*****