English

 

SONG OF CLAY

 

 

Night unfolds around my image in the mirror

while I gather up corpses of letters

that have died from excessive speech.

I choose a few letters

and greet them with spectrums of color

and the heavy breath of desire

until language’s gate opens before me.

 

And I see

the aleph full of pride:

the dance of a sacrificial gazelle.

The nūn with its wailing:

a crimson mouth, spellbound

by the names of love.

Then the aleph again, this time

fully unfurled.

Thus, the word anā—I—is drawn in the air

 with a swarm of words around it.

 

Anā, I:

the gluttonous paths that devour my footsteps,

the December air that plays with the faces and trees

while the rain washes red-brick houses.

It creates, from my childlike language,

a blue ladder that stretches to the sky.

 

Anā, I:

the bread of the hungry kneaded with sweat,

the night of a lover tossing and turning

in a bed of bewilderment

and regret,

the meowing of a cat on a February night,

a ballad lost in a field of song,

the music of an oud with wounded strings,

and the beat of ancient drums

in the forests of Africa.

 

Anā, I:

the sound of a spear

splitting the air

as it flies toward its prey,

and the eyes of the prey turning

to meet death head-on.

 

I

am a mare the color of hazel

that went down to the river

without the compass of the wind and trees.

And I

am the jealousy of the lover,

the mistress,

the wife.

 

I

am stolen splendor on a darkened street:

afflicted by color, sun, shadows,

and what I cannot see.

am a field of grain hungry for sun,

and the wailing of an olive tree

a hundred years old

cut down by a blind ax,

and the hissing of the fire

kindled by the last Native American

who clung to the land beneath his tent

as he died,

and the rush of the water at the river’s end

in cascades of light . . . anā.

I am the child’s lisp as it says “Papa”

for the very first time.

And I

am the daughter of clay, and its mother.

But whenever I stand there, in your hands,

I am nothing more than your love . . .

You,

my love.

 

 

 

 

Exercises in Loneliness

 

 

A wall of frail desire:

I leaned against it

and lapped up the blood flowing

from the wound of the rose

that was scratched by the air,

a she-wolf of your love.

The smell of your blood guides me

toward the light.

The fear that hovered over our encounters

with its feathered wings:

you slung it over your shoulders

but never took flight.

Fear is your face.

Fear is your trembling voice

when you ask me: Where are you now?

 

Fear: your smile,

the way you walk,

your very body

in the narrow spaces of farewell.

 

You’ll cross five forests on your own, after Havana.

Five forests and then I’ll die,

you say to yourself,

I’ll die

before I see the freckles that will cover your face

after all the suns

you’ll lie beneath.

 

And with a single fearful keystroke

you delete all the emails,

which had been chiseling the crystal of our mornings

like thirsty birds pecking

at the water of words:

You deleted all the letters that grew

on the edge of the desert—rasping, desirous.

 

Fear: the way your voice

quivers with doubt

when you hear the bracelets of my joy

ring through the hallway

that separates one encounter

from another.

Fear: you

when you stand before my mirror,

shattered.

 

Fear: you

when you lie down lazily

for years

beneath the sun of your tedious life,

years I cross

breathing in deeply

my own scent,

years I cross with tepid fear.

Fear: myself

as I pass through you

in a boat with two oars

that devour the salt of the life you lived before me.

 

Fear:

the words “my life, my everything,”

words you spoke to draw me in,

a heavy lid of love

that I would later turn into a carpet:

I lie down on it

on those weekend nights

when solitude

becomes a long torment for the self.