BLOG

I_Residency: Projects created by female artists duos during isolation

 

“Species”

Multimedia: Nata Sopromadze
Text: Lia Likokeli

 

Birds

 

The shadow covers the wet, bare ground.

My trembling, prepared to flee shadow,

Which thought it’s already been through everything, and nothing else could have scared it.

My words cover the wet, bare ground,

Words, which thought they’ve already said everything,

And only thing they do now is endlessly repeat themselves,

Only chew themselves, like the last sop before sleep.

The ashes of my thought cover the wet, bare ground.

The thought that poured itself over itself and set itself on a fire,

In order to be burnt down to the skeleton of all thoughts,

Down to main core, to the ultimate bareness,

In hope of finding the main idea,

And then covering the spring ground,

Which is wet and bare now,

And demands us,

When we knock our feet on the gate to the heart,

And wait when it will suck us in.

With the most wonderful calmness

I would bang myself against the wall,

But my head trained in loneliness and silence

Appeared to be very endurant.

I cover the wet, bare ground

With my shadow, my words,

Like the clay statue

Burnt at the high temperature of the most severe love,

In which they poured the metal soul,

And which they asked

To pick the first spring flowers.

...

The barking of stray dogs digitalized into the language we understand

And the sleep of cars - motionless like the caressed animals –

On the sidewalks

Was glimmering above the city,

And before they would break free from their leash,

Behind each locked door

Was breathing somebody

With fearsome, contagious breath,

And each of us have tied up our dangerous mouths,

To only release the sterile words,

And all of us together washed our hands in holy water,

To only make the pure things from now on.

And since exactly it will make you perish, what gets into your mouth,

We lined up, in order to more bravely, more diligently carry

Sanctity we’ve been so ruthlessly sentenced to,

And the last bus

Delivered my body to my own home,

Like the special device,

Well assembled and prepared

For the most significant work:

Saving the species.

...

Just don’t let my mother die, I said,

And I will find all the dead birds and bury them in silence,

Before others will see.

A bird dies with each bad word,

I was told,

And the birds died every day.

If we do something wrong, they will die,

Said children, while we were building the sandcastles,

And the birds were dying all around the Earth.

When your bird will fold the wings,

Your mother will die,

Because there is one tired woman per each bird,

One single female,

And your mother will die, girl,

And the chintz dress sewn by her trembles on your knees,

Whenever you find one more dead swallow

In the high grass,

And your heart quivers while you dig a ground

At the secret bird cemetery.

Then you put a pebble on the grave, to recognize it later

And remember it forever – that this was your bird,

When your beautiful mother,

Standing out like the blue flower among others,

Will stand up, shake of her lap

And say:

It’s my time,

I take to the skies,

Look after my bad girl.

Just don’t let my mother die, I say now,

And carefully step on

Wet, bare spring ground,

I wish somebody waved at me,

Finally scared me –

I would take off,

Would rip off the power lines

Stretched between the towers all over the floodplain,

Would fly over the forests full of deer

And rivers packed with fish,

Would cross the sky,

That pulsates like my valve of fear

Over the entire mankind

And is about to explode.

..

The wet land is covered with young nettle

And now we already can eat the nettle,

Some other herbs will follow soon,

And we will be able to survive till summer.

One black flower blooms in every yard –

Women come out to pick the nettle,

They unintentionally dress in the similar black cloths,

To make land accept them as acquaintance,

To make land recognize their grey hands covered with sandpaper,

And my hands also join

The hands of all women throughout the globe,

We all together grow towards the ground

And it will be long before we look up again –

Let’s make the rows too, since we’re already here,

Let’s seed something, till the soil is so tender,

Put into it the herb and vegetable seeds

Packed in the white sachets,

Throw into it the seeds of our fear

And simple joy mixed with the simple concerns,

Maybe something will grow, maybe something will blossom,

So that after we pass,

If something survives,

At least our beautiful dreams will blossom,

Our cowed, hidden love stories,

First laughs of our born children

And the first not made steps of our unborn children

On the wet ground in spring.

And the crows and rooks fly over the village,

Until we hang our calls over the fences –

Here I am too,

I lived too

I got tired too.

...

They came too – migratory birds,

An out of the three herons remaining on the walnut tree

One was sacrificed to the sound of gun.

It hung head-down as a rag of white fog,

As if the wounded tree has

Bandaged its branch by the body of migrating heron

And finally decided,

To publicly exhibit its wounds.

Shoot me again, it said,

My body is stronger than yours

And when your weak feet will break into the wet ground,

I will sprout the new branches.

And I stand and feel, how we pulsate all together,

Spread over the safe distance,

Connected with the wet breath,

Just like the heart of ground fibrillating.

And it seems like the Earth, from its wet throat fertile for each seed,

Throws incidentally pronounced words at us,

And bangs us against the skies to make us listen to each other,

Just like each of the mankind,

All human beings on the Earth

Have simultaneously

Received the most important in their life letter,

And when I opened my envelope,

The childhood declining towards the bird grave came out,

Laughed at me and pressed its pink knees against my chest,

And now I stand on the wet, covered in new grass ground

With the body, excessively existing,

Filled up with known or unknown microorganisms,

And I don’t know what to do with the childhood that awoke so untimely,

How to hug it,

In what language to sing for it and how to protect it,

And it’s about to say its first words,

And all I have to do, is to listen

And never ever forget again:

I am the bird, am not I, it will tell me,

Once I will take off

To somewhere else,

To far and beautiful universe,

In order to breed

And save my species.

BACK