A Woman in Damascus That Year
Her soul’s in my hand and she knows I’m there
medicating speech
with the wool that clouds left behind
on the roof of sleep
I climb a ladder of thirty collars
endings are up higher
as are the women who stand on the threshold
of longing tears
And she knows I’m there lighting a fire
for creatures to find her heart
I shoo grasshoppers
out of the grass in her stride, day into shadow
afternoon into night
While slow buses, memories of the countryside
and the angel’s house
are all reclining on slopes
waiting for an end
While She’s Asleep In Baghdad
Her face’s been asleep for a while
or perhaps she looks older in sleep,
had grown older or had been crying
Her heart doesn’t see
and the little sky, the river,
the women standing on the edge of the field
and the five absent brothers
light up at the beginning of memories
as we walk that path alone
the two of us
“Pick a flower!
we may believe
we’re here
and when we’re called
for no reason other than to be called
let’s go to where
we can’t stay
and our bodies, after us, will chuckle”
A flower
and its house in air are
between us
Light darkens behind the curtains
the river darkens,
the bridge, the women stand in vain
the shelves, the talk that’s on its way to others,
the clothes and her laugh in air
Then her age
was no longer clear
Only her heart appeared
to lean as it climbed the oil painting
where the women on the edge of the field
were and the field was
wilting
And where I can not cry or fear
I narrate:
Only her heart appeared
and the years
that resembled horses
kept running
