San Antonio
Tonight I lingered over your name,
Naomi Shihab Nye
the delicate assembly of vowels
a voice inside my head.
You were sleeping when I arrived.
I stood by your bed
and watched the sheets rise gently.
I knew what slant of light
would make you turn over.
It was then I felt
the highways slide out of my hands.
I remembered the old men
in the west side cafe,
dealing dominoes like magical charms.
It was then I knew,
like a woman looking backward,
I could not leave you,
or find anyone I loved more.If Rising From Your Grave
If rising from your grave you water
the flowers on your tombstone
before returning to the earth again
tomorrow everyone will accuse you of dying.
Better to remain dead.Are you afraid of death? Death means
life without the “I'm afraid of death.”
If rising from your grave you recite
a prayer by your tombstone
everyone will say you're dead.
Better to remain dead.
Naanaam
Crying Fable
Boo hoo hoo
your opal stone drop-row of one alphabet wasted on
desire, the pantomime death.
Sky this.
Reach back as far as the human goes.
Grieving folly, of folly, man.
The crown coinage, salt chest, cuckoo's sorrow-flower pressed
under the dreaming head.
Stunt-growth this
emotion, eat daisy-root
instead of deceit.
The lachrymal rivers fish out of the heart,
copious flow, if it rains
on this day.
Yes,
once upon a time.
Muddled pond to guppies, mind-swim, and then dry place
to Tyburn of old Paris, Greve, for
public executions. Have we, what body's water, tear to tear?
As no witch would shed more than three tears,
you shall more than three million
make and weep, and wet.
And drink.
So I say. So should you.Elena Karina Byrne
And We Have A Land
And we have a land without borders, like our idea
of the unknown, narrow and wide. A land . . .
when we walk in its map it becomes narrow with us,
and takes us to an ashen tunnel, so we shout
in its labyrinth: And we still love you, our love
is a hereditary illness. A land . . . when
it banishes us to the unknown . . . it grows. And
the willows and adjectives grow. And its grass grows
and its blue mountains. The lake widens
in the soul's north. Wheat rises in the soul's
south. The lemon fruit gleams like a lantern
in the emigrant's night. Geography glistens
like a holy book. And the chain of hills
becomes an ascension place to higher . . . to higher.
"If I were a bird I would have burned my wings," someone says
to his exiled self. The scent of autumn becomes
the image of what I love . . . The light rain leaks
into the heart's drought, and the imagination opens up
to its sources, and becomes place, the only
real one. And everything from the faraway
returns as a primitive countryside, as if earth
were still creating itself to meet Adam, descending
to the ground floor from his paradise. Then I say:
That's our land over there pregnant with us . . . When was it
that we were born? Did Adam get married twice? Or will we
be born a second time
to forget sin?Mahmoud Darwish