Poetry

each beast tells his own story
this is my story to you
I have loved you seventeen years
and both of us are not young any more
we live in another country

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.