I forget where some of their fingers started, how softly 
some of them ended. But I remember, in particular, 
the fingers of one man. We tumbled in simmering grass 
and he hooked all five behind my bottom teeth, 
then further in, like he was trying to drag a lake. 

Under the rustling sky of a Pennsylvania 
I won’t see again, his shadow was much larger 
than mine—wasn’t it? In the orchards, pale-green fruits 
were starting to ripen, lush as petals. Lush as petals, 
which is a way of saying easily pierced.

Love is not like water I can see the bottom of. 
It’s a mountain’s crags I climb, searching for a vantage point. 
I recall what I’ve let go slack in my palms, the way he bit 
his lip, then mine, how in the best photographs 
of horses, all of their legs hit the air at once.

The bark of a dog in the distance is a rusted door 
as it closes. The gray of the sky outside becomes 
the gray of the sky inside. I forget where some 
of their fingers started, how softly some of them ended.
I light a cigarette and sip my tea. The smoke mingles with the steam.

Hold on, they said, but she was tiny and let
the kite go flying above tears and treetops.
The kite had a will of its own, and its will
was wind which carried it the way love carries
surrender and forgiveness. I was right behind
and watched until hope was a speck and gone.
I’d have let it swoop me up the way a bird
of prey lifts a rabbit or a mouse, not afraid
to rub my nose in sky and roll about in deep
fields of snow far above cirrostratus.
Not afraid to let bliss devour me whole.
Or grief, if I must live my forever in orbit
with the Wolf Moon as it prowls night
after night howling for the wilderness we lost.

teach us there can be movement 
in stillness. in every broken syllable 
of traffic a syllabus that says
while you are suffering we are all
going to be unwell—let us 
instead distill business as usual 
down to the speed of a tree eating 
light. as usual, business is built 
from freight trains and warships
even when ‘it’s just coffee.’
these bridges should only connect 
the living, so when the living turn 
again toward death worship
it’s time to still the delivery of plastics 
and red meats to the galas of venture 
capital. to reject our gods if they are 
not the gods who teach us all that comes 
from dirt returns to it holy—
the holiest word i know is no. 
no more money for the endless
throat of money. no more 
syllogisms that permission
endless suffering. no more.
and on the eighth day of a holiday
meant to represent a people 
fighting occupation my teachers 
who stretch a drop of oil into a week 
of light take each other’s arms
across eight bridges of this settler colony 
singing prayers older than any country 
as the chevron burns in the distance.
o stilted vernacular of life—
o pedagogs of the godly pausing—
what mycelia spreads its speaking
limbs beneath the floors of our cities. 
the only holy land i know
is where life is. in the story 
i was taught alongside my first 
language it takes god six days 
to make the terrible world 
and on seventh day he rested
and on the eighth we blocked traffic. 

              ^{translated from the Arabic by Fady Joudah}

I didn’t apologize to the well when I passed the well, 
I borrowed from the ancient pine tree a cloud 
and squeezed it like an orange, then waited for a gazelle 
white and legendary. And I ordered my heart to be patient: 
Be neutral as if you were not of me! Right here 
the kind shepherds stood on air and evolved 
their flutes, then persuaded the mountain quail toward 
the snare. And right here I saddled a horse for flying toward 
my planets, then flew. And right here the priestess 
told me: Beware of the asphalt road and the cars 
and walk upon your exhalation. Right here 
I slackened my shadow and waited, I picked the tiniest 
rock and stayed up late. I broke the myth and I broke. 
And I circled the well until I flew from myself 
to what isn’t of it. A deep voice shouted at me: 
This grave isn’t your grave. So I apologized. 
I read verses from the wise holy book, and said 
to the unknown one in the well: Salaam upon you the day 
you were killed in the land of peace, and the day you rise 
from the darkness of the well alive! 

A noun sentence, no verb 
to it or in it: to the sea the scent of the bed 
after making love ... a salty perfume 
or a sour one. A noun sentence: my wounded joy 
like the sunset at your strange windows. 
My flower green like the phoenix. My heart exceeding 
my need, hesitant between two doors: 
entry a joke, and exit 
a labyrinth. Where is my shadow—my guide amid 
the crowdedness on the road to judgment day? And I 
as an ancient stone of two dark colors in the city wall, 
chestnut and black, a protruding insensitivity 
toward my visitors and the interpretation of shadows. Wishing 
for the present tense a foothold for walking behind me 
or ahead of me, barefoot. Where 
is my second road to the staircase of expanse? Where 
is futility? Where is the road to the road? 
And where are we, the marching on the footpath of the present 
tense, where are we? Our talk a predicate 
and a subject before the sea, and the elusive foam 
of speech the dots on the letters, 
wishing for the present tense a foothold 
on the pavement ...

I touch you as a lonely violin touches the suburbs of the faraway place 
patiently the river asks for its share of the drizzle 
and, bit by bit, a tomorrow passing in poems approaches 
so I carry faraway’s land and it carries me on travel’s road 

On a mare made of your virtues, my soul weaves 
a natural sky made of your shadows, one chrysalis at a time. 
I am the son of what you do in the earth, son of my wounds 
that have lit up the pomegranate blossoms in your closed-up gardens 

Out of jasmine the night’s blood streams white. Your perfume, 
my weakness and your secret, follows me like a snakebite. And your hair 
is a tent of wind autumn in color. I walk along with speech 
to the last of the words a bedouin told a pair of doves
 
I palpate you as a violin palpates the silk of the faraway time 
and around me and you sprouts the grass of an ancient place—anew 

In Jerusalem, and I mean within the ancient walls,
I walk from one epoch to another without a memory
to guide me. The prophets over there are sharing
the history of the holy . . . ascending to heaven
and returning less discouraged and melancholy, because love
and peace are holy and are coming to town.
I was walking down a slope and thinking to myself: How
do the narrators disagree over what light said about a stone?
Is it from a dimly lit stone that wars flare up?
I walk in my sleep. I stare in my sleep. I see
no one behind me. I see no one ahead of me.
All this light is for me. I walk. I become lighter. I fly
then I become another. Transfigured. Words
sprout like grass from Isaiah’s messenger
mouth: “If you don’t believe you won’t believe.”
I walk as if I were another. And my wound a white
biblical rose. And my hands like two doves
on the cross hovering and carrying the earth.
I don’t walk, I fly, I become another,
transfigured. No place and no time. So who am I?
I am no I in ascension’s presence. But I
think to myself: Alone, the prophet Mohammad
spoke classical Arabic. “And then what?”
Then what? A woman soldier shouted:
Is that you again? Didn’t I kill you?
I said: You killed me . . . and I forgot, like you, to die.

I walk the world with a locked box
Lodged in my chest. Doctor, it hurts
But not as much as it should. In Bucha,

On the roadway of the Street of Apples
A woman lay four weeks straight
Unburied even by snow. They saw her red

Coat and rolled right over, Russians,
Tanked and vigilant in their to and fro. 
Doctor, there’s nothing wrong with me

That isn’t also true of many others. 
At night I sleep under a vast epiphany
That hasn’t descended upon me,

Pinpricks that shine a white writing 
I can’t read. I don’t want to know 
Yet. Instead I ask to stay here, greedy 

For the smell of autumn. Before 
Leaving, I’ve made a miniature of me
To witness the raising of the sea, 

To watch over the unimaginable,
To greet this revelation of a future 
With those new names it will need.  

In the year of providence, in the year of vast greenery, in the rainy season, 
when the creeks tore through the mountainside and flooded the fields,  
when the rains cut great black gouges in the hill behind the church  
so the bones poked through where graves once were— 
In the chaotic days, in the days of mess and brilliance, in the scatter 
of bones, of coffin splinter and bits of cloth where we scavenged 
among the decayed in the afternoon mists—such treasures we  
discovered, coins with faces no one knew, a crucifix golden in the sun,  
a ring and a brooch. We were children and wild, enjoyed the muck and loam  
until the old priest waved his shotgun in the air and we scattered, laughing. 
And then such a silence while we hid among the roots and bones 
of the ancient dead. I have never been happier than that.  

+

I wrote those lines three years ago, imagining decay I’d never see, 
though perhaps you have lived something like it where you are, 
hundreds of years from now, when I have been forgotten. 
In that iteration, they are my own bones poking from the loam 
behind the wrecked churchyard of my imagination. And you, whom I’ll  
never know, pick happily through them for coins. I was thinking about this poem 
at the grocery store, by the refrigerated meats, I was thinking of my distant future, 
and you who live there, when an old man fell suddenly to the floor.   
He lay there beside a broken mayonnaise jar. When I knew he wasn’t hurt,  
I helped him to the bathroom, where I dabbed at his shirt  
with one of those brown paper towels that come on endless rolls.  
He was sweating. He smelled of wine. He offered me $5 for my trouble.  
I didn’t want his money, but I took it just to make him happy.

To me, one silly task is like another.
I bare the shambling tricks of lust and pride.
This flesh will never give a child its mother,
Song, like a wing, tears through my breast, my side,
And madness chooses out my voice again,
Again. I am the chosen no hand saves:
The shrieking heaven lifted over men,
Not the dumb earth, wherein they set their graves.