Today’s poem comes from the contemporary Palestinian anthology “A bird is not a stone” (Freight Books, Glasgow, 2014) (Thanks to Ali Cobby Eckermann).  The poem is A Woman, by Samih Faraj, translated by Jackie Kay

A Woman
Take one step towards the old house
And another down the stairs to the home
Where a woman sits in the early evening light:
Light, the radiance of a dove, shining;
Or light like the light from a shrine.
No one knows where she has come from –
Through which quarter or distant land she has passed.
No one knows which door she opened –
What shadow the light cast when she’d gone.
No one knows the flood she passed through – 
The risks she took, the daily deluge.
No one can measure the vast sea she crossed,
The hazards she held in her small hands.
An ordinary woman: one step at a time, one step
On the land lacking, on the barren soil, one step
On the time passing:one step on the clock ticking.
Except for something in her now rising, hot, scolding.
Even her dreams are besieged, it seems, yet
In the middle of a siege it’s still possible to dream.
A dream of the old house, and her first step.