Reading from Southbank Centre's Poetry Parnassus festival, 2012.

Translated from the Georgian by Timothy Kercher and Nene Giorgadze:
 
Let my husband know
 
Let my husband know
 
that this, my veil, sprouted from my skull
like milk bursting with fat spurts from a crusty fissure.
The veil, smoke from the flume.
And I, the blackened chimney
 
or too-hot porch that releases
 
globules of milk fat – wisps –
 
floating to high up places from where there’s no return.
Let my husband know my mother’s soul is a veil –
flown worriedly into my hair to sway me –
but paint
 
on my flesh still lingers, like a bullet made of diamond.
 
Let my husband know
 
I’ll wear a veil of sweetened pigeon meat on the back of my head,
 
or instead of a veil, I’ll use his letters as covering
as I grow old and transform
like a flower unfolding in boiling water.