Poetry

In that bad year, in a city to have now no name,
In the already-dark of a winter’s day, our feet

Out of a patch of fog, or the branches
of a broken tree, or as a light
suddenly aglow on the ceiling—
they assemble themselves, and briefly appear.

Here in this wadi we lived during the war.
Many years have passed since then, many victories
and many defeats. I have gathered many consolations in my life

Dear lost sharer
of silences,
I would send you a letter

upon mutability—if it were possible. But you
don’t know me. Already you cannot conceive my making the second line
of a poem so much longer than the first.

Twenty years ago there was a life for each of us
to turn away from
or embrace. A song returns to remind me
of what I must have felt,
and when it’s over, I play it back again.

When death carts me off to the bottomlands, when I begin the long work of rising—

Death, whoever and whatever you are, tallest king of
tall kings, grant me these wishes: unstring my bones;
let me be not one thing but all things, and...