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Gedicht

Mir Mahfuz Ali

My Daughter Waits by the Door

My Daughter Waits by the Door

My Daughter Waits by the Door

We live on a council estate, my daughter and I.
Nine years old, but she looks much younger.
She has not yet learnt to read the minds

and the motives of our neighbours. It’s a month
now since they stopped playing with her,
Heather, Helen, Edmond and Simon.

When I bring her home from school she
doesn’t take off her jacket, but waits.
When a breeze whistles past the house

she opens the blue door with a smile
to see whether anybody waits outside
asking her to play on the reckless street

smothered in hostile dust; but no-one is there.
A long emptiness howls like a mad dog
chained in unknown hatred at the gate.

Her heart hardens like the weary
paving stones. Nobody comes
to soften my daughter’s fallen spirit.
Mir Mahfuz Ali

Mir Mahfuz Ali

(Bangladesh, 1958)

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My Daughter Waits by the Door

We live on a council estate, my daughter and I.
Nine years old, but she looks much younger.
She has not yet learnt to read the minds

and the motives of our neighbours. It’s a month
now since they stopped playing with her,
Heather, Helen, Edmond and Simon.

When I bring her home from school she
doesn’t take off her jacket, but waits.
When a breeze whistles past the house

she opens the blue door with a smile
to see whether anybody waits outside
asking her to play on the reckless street

smothered in hostile dust; but no-one is there.
A long emptiness howls like a mad dog
chained in unknown hatred at the gate.

Her heart hardens like the weary
paving stones. Nobody comes
to soften my daughter’s fallen spirit.

My Daughter Waits by the Door

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