Ache
Begin, World, with my beating heart;
condense at my center, vapour to cloud;
sprout from ample fingertips of aspen — and,
each step in between, each certainty and
indecision, every death’s difficult graft, walk
across my mind. For I am entirely sure of you —
knowing another bloom to be inevitable as stars —
so at ease occupying this air, these rocks. If
I arrived a little late, with little left to name,
I arrived with us already intimate, arrived
in love and you under my spell. So sure that
when I leave you will never be the same. So
when the woodpecker hammers pinewood,
sending hollow rings of sound as evidence
of a gentle conflict through this pooling
assignation, I take both their sides — and
the tension between this contradiction
is the aching of my life.
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Fake Empire
I suppose that I was born of a nation.
Remind me again, stranger, just who I am.
Am I an army marching down an isthmus,
swallowed into proportion? I should be flattered
by your fear: by the way, when you see me
you see an idea, a movement, a collection
of principles so far beyond what I could have
gathered, and I so naturally stand for. How
I yearn for your indifference, to be mistaken
for a migratory bird passing through your
empire. But there’s no denying the times.
I could have come from a man, from a village.
Once I could have come from a deity, now
I’m reduced to come from a race and religion.
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Love Letter
City, blinking at the lake through fog
like you could never be as free as this,
wistful City like the roots to clouds
above you, air around you. And drifting
out into the lake I always forget you
are more than a monument, always regret
the living core of you; the same way I see
the forests and the mountains from distance,
not knowing the forces that bore them, as if
in frame, interpreted through an artist’s gaze.
Cold City, I feel close when in the rearview,
larger in my imagination than in my feelings,
always leading to the question: will I ever
be able to make a home of you?
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Sink
To see that ship afloat — I would follow
as if I could walk on water. Swells leaning
against the rounded hull, like the sea’s hands
caressing broad shoulders. But I am of denser
stuff than faith — I would rise across the fish
of Galilee, asking them questions beyond their
fragile memories. This is natural to me, sinking
into air from amniotic water, for a moment
of difficult breathing, to rise to the bottom to
the bones of Peter. Like an inanimate fruit I grow
rich and heavy, bruised, sensitive with age,
to the abundance and the disease, to that
which is deeper than joy and sorrow.
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Start Again
If I could start again. If I could say
this is the beginning. The Earth spins as
of now. That God created us just like this.
Breathe this smokey air as if I needed it.
Drink this plastic water as if it’s medicine.
If I could say every moment creates itself
anew. Say we arrived here just today well
prepared with knives and measuring tape
to carve it all into pieces. Sit across a dark
chessboard with divinity, try to bend it to
my will. You can tell me all is as it must be.
And I’d say I’m not sure just what we’ve lost.
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Cassiopeia
Balanced on a piece of driftwood, leaning
on Cassiopeia; between two skies, one above
and one below. Every stroke of paddles
sent the wake shimmering through lament —
how could beauty bring you down so low?
I swear I will not fall as long as I’m alive.
Afloat by the grace of stories, prayers,
Ave Marias; dim lights in heavens, lit one
by one. So many awakenings transfixed
upon that shared canvas. But the shores
veiled, my eye returns to that indelible line.
I cling to your frame until the Sun is nigh.
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Anesthetic
I invited him now and then to the comfort
of my living room. Walk off the tightrope between
rooftops, slip through one of the wounds in the night
sky that you go looking to suture — let’s have a drink,
a chat. I could never be sure whether I envied him or
loved him. And he drank all my whiskey and said
this comfort is an anesthetic, and stumbled out again
in search of a bar fight to break up. I am divorced
from the violence I perpetrate to survive, but sometimes
I catch my thoughts running out loud on sidewalks,
and marvel at this gush of feeling. I save up the trivia
for the next time he comes by. It’s incredible, I say,
how sands from the Sahara fertilize the Amazon.
I no longer feel worthy of leading a difficult life,
where the consequences throttle the pulse.
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Chained
So hard to imagine being free. Hard to find
a metaphor, to ascribe to a purified symbol,
point to an exemplary life. Look, I can say,
how the smoke disperses. I can experiment
with this will, try to create moments, live them
in search. There I am, supine on a cabin’s floor
by the fireplace, under the smoke, thinking of
the Raven; directionless on the road, town
after town; here I am, after her flight through
city streets, with an uneasy feeling I’m being
followed by my future. And to shake that off,
I picture picking up arms for your cause. Once
it’s over, what would our freedom be from?
This bondage to the struggle, your voice raised
in protest, is all that there is. Chained to me,
you can come and go as you please.
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Train
On a train to Paris you asked
where is it that you’re going? An old lady
told us where to disembark. The streets
might as well have had no names; the cafes
might as well have been deserted. And you
led me through with long strides, wide eyed,
one foot in the future. I could have taken root
in the middle of that ancient desert, the cream
pastiche of buildings following one another,
forever; the pavements branching out like
settled veins, abundant and imperative.
How far forward could I leap? You were always
departing, and I felt so comfortable in the
Pavillon Denon with the old men I knew.
After you did finally leave, I wondered
if I ever did get off that train.
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Emptiness
After everything, I ended up in this empty room;
all surfaces the same, no way to know floor from
ceiling. Over the years, I crawled every inch of
every side, like an ant looking for her colony.
And in the grain of monochrome I found shapes
of everything I have known; in the nothingness
that was left me was compressed the whole world.
They would take, if they could, from me, even this
emptiness — in their hands it would turn to rust.
Stranded in space I will find something to love.
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A Desert Rose
The desert encroached, sand making
its way foot by foot, to the very doorstep.
A primrose rose through tiles, like a raised hand —
blocked my way out. And I can call anyplace
home, as long as they let me sleep. Daughter,
I said, don’t dwell on these myths, we do not
belong to memory — we belong to that
which is left us, and even now it is much more
than a life can take. But shall we uproot again
and go looking for the mythical Garden? —
let the caustic air dry us to birdcage and roll
us over, back across the ancient footsteps.
When finally the rains do come to our rest,
you can continue to marvel at possibilities, and
I, with a clear conscience, give in to nostalgia.
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Nicer Cage
Cross legged under a tree, wild haired,
uncivilized, preparing for my lives to come; naked
and muddy-wet, they dragged me out of the Ganges
as I was bathing. No one bothers to educate me
anymore, but as long as I am here I might as well
have a nicer cage. And they imagine they’re on
the outside, entertained; and they are wrong.
This world within me — washed pure by Ganga —
extends beyond their laws. I don’t want to dismantle
these bars anymore. I’ll pull them out and plant them
in a wider arc one by one through all my lives,
until everything is on the inside. Soon enough
my cage will be their empire.
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Another Way
A nation convulses as it is absorbed
into another, tearing itself to pieces. A fire
savages a forest and weeds take over. A bird
loses its wings and goes swimming for fish.
One thing becomes everything; everything
returns to one — through death. So we disperse
from Cain into a thousand tribes, and will return
to a lonesome old man under an orange Sun,
with no one left to kill. And I am not yet ready
to ask if there is any other way. So do not parade
these corpses before my eyes, as if to scream
the dead are innocent and the living guilty,
as if your false beliefs have no culpability.
I am not willing to mourn at each of your
awakenings. Stripped of my lineage, like
the dead, dispossessed of my language,
I stand free from the burden of history.
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Other Side
The end came and went, and it’s as if
nothing changed at all. He stood ambiguous
in a different place, suitcase in hand. Thought,
I guess, in a different language, the same sort
of thoughts. How to reach for the same old
words? — to say: this must be the other side.
How strange to be faithful, as if we could hold
anything for long. It is, I guess, an act of rebellion,
to love anything at all. And the silences the same,
and wind disturbing serenity of water the same,
through ages. I wanted to ask him: what is it
you’re holding on to? But I let go of my pride.
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Second Beauty
In the neglected little garden behind
the apartment, littered with toys and then
sporting gadgets, petunias’ bloomed long
year on year. The girls I knew then have since
blossomed and faded — started looking for
meaning. Then the search for a second beauty.
How beautiful would I like to become? —
so much so the people carry me through my
life, so adoration serves as sustenance. And if
I stand before them and sing, so they may
remember. And if I drop alms in the arms
of some wretched creature on the streets, no,
if my heart aches for him sincerely for
just a moment, and I become more moral
than his creator. If I could find any way to be
without the body. I do wonder if the petunias
still come and go in that garden, and wish
that I had asked them for their secret.
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Come and Play
How do you see them? — storming out
on their horses with their Book and their swords,
ready to give and take life. You would rather belong
to legend and destiny. But what about today?
You confront the moment only when there’s pain
to bring it into focus — yours or someone else’s.
And then return to hope, as if it were the ghostly
camp of an eternal army of purpose, waiting
in the wings for the next humiliation; to say look
I told you so, and it is so; and we are waiting
to rise from the dead. It is true that there are
things that we are born with and things we have
to learn again and again. And each time we learn
we change what we learn a little to suit ourselves.
Because you are afraid, I will change incessantly,
again and again and again, until I am as clouds,
unprincipled and for the sky-gazers, until you are
not ashamed to leave the past. Come and play
the games of power: even midst hope it’s the only way.
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Significance
You said it made you feel insignificant,
how one thing follows another, all the way
back, how one man follows another,
over and over. Above rocky beaches
of the Shield, over feldspar and quartz,
bats followed moths and dodged fireflies,
over a canvas made of the Milky Way.
It made you feel small, the governance
of laws holding stars to account, all the way
to us being pinned upon the rocky beaches,
upon this forever expanse. And I could
not express how wrong I felt you were; and
shivering, we returned to the fire. Men of
numbers will continue to count infinities,
looking for the pixel: the limits without
and within run the same forever expanse.
All this for the shifting fire to throw into relief
your many angles — so I may contemplate
you, while you contemplate the moon.
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