Olga Broumas
Olga Broumas
wurde 1949 in Syros (Griechenland) geboren, sie studierte an
der University of Pennsylvania (Architektur und Kreatives Schreiben).
Ihr erstes Werk Caritas wurde 1976 veröffentlicht, 1976 gewann
sie mit ihrem Gedichtband Beginning with O den Yale Younger
Poets Prize. Olga Broumas schreibt u. a. Gedichte über die
Liebe zwischen Frauen, sie verwendet antike Motive und schreibt
Mythen über griechische Göttinnen aus kritischer Perspektive
um. Weitere Werke: Rave; Poems, 1975-1999; Eros, Eros, Eros:
Selected and Last Poems of Odysseas Elytis, translation, 1997.
|
Cinderella
...the joy that isn't shared
I heard, dies young.
--Anne Sexton, 1928-1974
Apart from my sisters, estranged
from my mother, I am a woman alone
in a house of men
who secretly
call themselves princes, alone
with me usually, under cover of dark. I am the one allowed in
to the royal chambers, whose small foot conveniently
fills the slipper of glass. The woman writer, the lady
umpire, the madam chairman, anyone's wife.
I know what I know.
And I once was glad
of the chance to use it, even alone
in a strange castle doing overtime on my own, cracking
the royal code. The princes spoke
in their father's language, were eager to praise me
my nimble tongue. I am a woman in a state of siege, alone
as one piece of laundry, strung on a windy clothesline
a
mile long. A woman co-opted by promises: the lure
of a job, the ruse of a choice, a woman forced
to bear witness, falsely
against my own kind, as each
other sister was judge inadequate, bitchy, incompetent,
jealous, too thin, too fat. I know what I know.
What sweet bread I make
for myself in this prosperous house
is dirty, what good soup I boil turns
in my mouth to mud. Give
me my ashes. A cold stove, a cinder-block pillow, wet
canvas shoes in my sisters', my sisters' hut. Or I swear
I'll die young
like those favored before me, hand-picked each one
for her joyful heart.
|
|
