Banana Cake

By Tararith Kho

There is only one race of banana;

Unhappy in the limits of its life—

And who on earth is there to help it?

Taken whole, it is cut directly:

Burned, the threads of a single being—

And all parts scattered, lost from language.

They stuff their cake with ripe banana;

Wrap it with banana leaves:

Enclose it neatly, trim the edges,

Knot the twine of the selfsame tree.

And they make it tight. They tie it again.

They close around its very essence:

All bananas are the same. In the end, meaningless.

 These leaves they use to kill the sound—

Pack the cake with a pleasing fragrance,

These bonds they knot let nothing free.

And all is tied to be loosened once,

When one happy person

Eats the cake and lets the husk fall away.

You can see the marks in the grass:

Every empty thing discarded.

These are the prints of cruelty,

Of things ripped, again and again,

Of the stifled seeping tree, left no choice;

But to kill itself in the bonds it made.

 - Trans. Aisha Down