“Pigeon Arrangement” by Rana Samir

 

There are squares that recount no stories;

they prefer to spend their time recalling

that nothing ever happened in them except, maybe —

that girl who dropped her ice cream;

the boy determined to grab a pigeon;

the first date of a couple who later broke up.

The rain falling ardently each September;

the January snow and the August sun.

Squares which never saw blood or tears

except, maybe, of the poet sitting at the corner.



Immanuel Mifsud
Immanuel Mifsud was born in Malta in 1967. He is a six-time national award-winning author, playwright, and visual artist. Two volumes of Mifsud’s poetry have been published in the United Kingdom and Ireland: The Play of Waves (Arc Publications, 2017), translated by Maurice Riordan, won the English PEN Award; and Confidential Reports (Southword Editions, 2005). His memoir, In the Name of the Father (and of the Son), was published in the United Kingdom by Parthian Books in 2019 and in French translation by Gallimard, as well as in other countries. A recipient of the European Union Prize for Literature, Mifsud’s works have been translated into seventeen languages. Mifsud is a professor at the University of Malta.

Ruth Ward
Ruth Ward is a writer and translator of both poetry and fiction. Her most recent work, Váh (Midsea Books, 2024), is a bilingual collaboration, with Immanuel Mifsud, of text and visual art. Ward’s translations have been broadcast on the BBC and read at both the Library of Congress and the Delegation of the European Union to the United States. She lives in New England.

Rana Samir