Lying, thinking
Last night
How to find my soul a home
Where water is not thirsty
And bread loaf is not stone
I came up with one thing
And I don’t believe I’m wrong
That nobody,
But nobody
Can make it out here alone.

Alone, all alone
Nobody, but nobody
Can make it out here alone.

There are some millionaires
With money they can’t use
Their wives run round like banshees
Their children sing the blues
They’ve got expensive doctors
To cure their hearts of stone.
But nobody
No, nobody
Can make it out here alone.

Alone, all alone
Nobody, but nobody
Can make it out here alone.

Now if you listen closely
I’ll tell you what I know
Storm clouds are gathering
The wind is gonna blow
The race of man is suffering
And I can hear the moan,
’Cause nobody,
But nobody
Can make it out here alone.

Alone, all alone
Nobody, but nobody
Can make it out here alone.

It’s neither red
nor sweet.
It doesn’t melt
or turn over,
break or harden,
so it can’t feel
pain,
yearning,
regret.

It doesn’t have 
a tip to spin on,
it isn’t even
shapely—
just a thick clutch
of muscle,
lopsided,
mute. Still,
I feel it inside
its cage sounding
a dull tattoo:
I want, I want—

but I can’t open it:
there’s no key.
I can’t wear it
on my sleeve,
or tell you from
the bottom of it
how I feel. Here,
it’s all yours, now—
but you’ll have
to take me,
too.

A man crosses the street in rain,
stepping gently, looking two times north and south,
because his son is asleep on his shoulder.

No car must splash him.
No car drive too near to his shadow.

This man carries the world’s most sensitive cargo
but he’s not marked.
Nowhere does his jacket say FRAGILE,
HANDLE WITH CARE.

His ear fills up with breathing.
He hears the hum of a boy’s dream
deep inside him.

We’re not going to be able
to live in this world
if we’re not willing to do what he’s doing
with one another.

The road will only be wide.
The rain will never stop falling.

To every thing there is a season,

and a time to every purpose under the heaven:

A time to be born, a time to die;

a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;

A time to kill, and a time to heal;

a time to break down, and a time to build up;

A time to weep, and a time to laugh;

a time to mourn, and a time to dance;

A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together;

a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;

A time to get, and a time to lose;

a time to keep, and a time to cast away;

A time to rend, and a time to sew;

a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;

A time to love, and a time to hate;

A time of war, and a time of peace.

I, too, sing America.

I am the darker brother.
They send me to eat in the kitchen
When company comes,
But I laugh,
And eat well,
And grow strong.

Tomorrow,
I'll be at the table
When company comes.
Nobody'll dare
Say to me,
“Eat in the kitchen,”
Then.

Besides,
They'll see how beautiful I am
And be ashamed—

I, too, am America.

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.

I’ve heard it in the chillest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.

Remember the sky that you were born under,
know each of the star’s stories.
Remember the moon, know who she is.
Remember the sun’s birth at dawn, that is the
strongest point of time. Remember sundown
and the giving away to night.
Remember your birth, how your mother struggled
to give you form and breath. You are evidence of
her life, and her mother’s, and hers.
Remember your father. He is your life, also.
Remember the earth whose skin you are:
red earth, black earth, yellow earth, white earth
brown earth, we are earth.
Remember the plants, trees, animal life who all have their
tribes, their families, their histories, too. Talk to them,
listen to them. They are alive poems.
Remember the wind. Remember her voice. She knows the
origin of this universe.
Remember you are all people and all people
are you.
Remember you are this universe and this
universe is you.
Remember all is in motion, is growing, is you.
Remember language comes from this.
Remember the dance language is, that life is.
Remember.

Life is short, though I keep this from my children.
Life is short, and I’ve shortened mine
in a thousand delicious, ill-advised ways,
a thousand deliciously ill-advised ways
I’ll keep from my children. The world is at least
fifty percent terrible, and that’s a conservative
estimate, though I keep this from my children.
For every bird there is a stone thrown at a bird.
For every loved child, a child broken, bagged,
sunk in a lake. Life is short and the world
is at least half terrible, and for every kind
stranger, there is one who would break you,
though I keep this from my children. I am trying
to sell them the world. Any decent realtor,
walking you through a real shithole, chirps on
about good bones: This place could be beautiful,
right? You could make this place beautiful.

You are enough

Divinity flows in your fingertips
        with light so radiant
        every beat of your heart
a victory march
made of whole universes
        stitched by the hands of creation
        with flawless design
a prophecy You fulfill perfectly with every breath

        You

The sun wouldn’t shine the same without it
Creation is only waiting for You
                to smile back at it

Do you see it yet?

You are enough
        For the birds to sing about
        For the seeds to sprout about
        For the stars to shoot about

        Do you see it yet?

        Gardens in your speech
Fields of wildflowers in your prayers
        Lighthouses in your eyes
    No one else can see it for you

You have always been enough
You will always be enough

Your simple act of being is enough

            Do you see it yet?

O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done,
The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won,
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring;
       But O heart! heart! heart!
         O the bleeding drops of red,
           Where on the deck my Captain lies,
             Fallen cold and dead.

O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;
Rise up- for you the flag is flung- for you the bugle trills,
For you bouquets and ribbon’d wreaths- for you the shores a-crowding,
For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;
       Here Captain! dear father!
         This arm beneath your head!
           It is some dream that on the deck,
             You’ve fallen cold and dead.

My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still,
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will,
The ship is anchor’d safe and sound, its voyage closed and done,
From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won;
       Exult O shores, and ring O bells!
         But I with mournful tread,
           Walk the deck my Captain lies,
             Fallen cold and dead.

if it doesn’t come bursting out of you
in spite of everything,
don’t do it.
unless it comes unasked out of your
heart and your mind and your mouth
and your gut,
don’t do it.
if you have to sit for hours
staring at your computer screen
or hunched over your
typewriter
searching for words,
don’t do it.
if you’re doing it for money or
fame,
don’t do it.
if you’re doing it because you want
women in your bed,
don’t do it.
if you have to sit there and
rewrite it again and again,
don’t do it.
if it’s hard work just thinking about doing it,
don’t do it.
if you’re trying to write like somebody
else,
forget about it.

if you have to wait for it to roar out of
you,
then wait patiently.
if it never does roar out of you,
do something else.

if you first have to read it to your wife
or your girlfriend or your boyfriend
or your parents or to anybody at all,
you’re not ready.

don’t be like so many writers,
don’t be like so many thousands of
people who call themselves writers,
don’t be dull and boring and
pretentious, don’t be consumed with self-
love.
the libraries of the world have
yawned themselves to
sleep
over your kind.
don’t add to that.
don’t do it.
unless it comes out of
your soul like a rocket,
unless being still would
drive you to madness or
suicide or murder,
don’t do it.
unless the sun inside you is
burning your gut,
don’t do it.

when it is truly time,
and if you have been chosen,
it will do it by
itself and it will keep on doing it
until you die or it dies in you.

there is no other way.

and there never was.

Hold fast to dreams 
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.

Hold fast to dreams
For when dreams go
Life is a barren field
Frozen with snow.

I believe in you my soul, the other I am must not abase itself to you,
And you must not be abased to the other.

Loafe with me on the grass,  loose the stop from your throat,
Not words, not music or rhyme I want, not custom or lecture, not even the best,
Only the lull I like, the hum of your valvèd voice.

I mind how once we lay such a transparent summer morning, 
How you settled your head athwart my hips and gently turn'd over upon me,
And parted the shirt from my bosom-bone, and plunged your tongue to my bare-stript heart,
And reach'd till you felt my beard, and reach'd till you held my feet.

Swiftly arose and spread around me the peace and knowledge that pass all the argument of the earth,
And I know that the hand of God is the promise of my own,
And I know that the spirit of God is the brother of my own,
And that all the men ever born are also my brothers,  and the women my sisters and lovers,
And that a kelson of the creation is love,
And limitless are leaves stiff or drooping in the fields,
And brown ants in the little wells beneath them,
And mossy scabs of the worm fence, heap'd stones, elder, mullein and poke-weed.

And death shall have no dominion.
Dead men naked they shall be one
With the man in the wind and the west moon;
When their bones are picked clean and the clean bones gone,
They shall have stars at elbow and foot;
Though they go mad they shall be sane,
Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again;
Though lovers be lost love shall not;
And death shall have no dominion.

And death shall have no dominion.
Under the windings of the sea
They lying long shall not die windily;
Twisting on racks when sinews give way,
Strapped to a wheel, yet they shall not break;
Faith in their hands shall snap in two,
And the unicorn evils run them through;
Split all ends up they shan't crack;
And death shall have no dominion.

And death shall have no dominion.
No more may gulls cry at their ears
Or waves break loud on the seashores;
Where blew a flower may a flower no more
Lift its head to the blows of the rain;
Though they be mad and dead as nails,
Heads of the characters hammer through daisies;
Break in the sun till the sun breaks down,
And death shall have no dominion.

When we two parted
   In silence and tears,
Half broken-hearted
   To sever for years,
Pale grew thy cheek and cold,
   Colder thy kiss;
Truly that hour foretold 
   Sorrow to this.

The dew of the morning 
   Sunk chill on my brow— 
It felt like the warning
   Of what I feel now.
Thy vows are all broken,
   And light is thy fame;
I hear thy name spoken,
   And share in its shame.

They name thee before me, 
   A knell to mine ear;
A shudder comes o’er me—
   Why wert thou so dear?
They know not I knew thee, 
   Who knew thee too well—
Long, long shall I rue thee,
   Too deeply to tell.

In secret we met—
   In silence I grieve,
That thy heart could forget,
   Thy spirit deceive.
If I should meet thee
   After long years,
How should I greet thee?—
   With silence and tears.

A Poem for Barack Obama’s Presidential Inauguration
January 21, 2013
 

One sun rose on us today, kindled over our shores,
peeking over the Smokies, greeting the faces
of the Great Lakes, spreading a simple truth
across the Great Plains, then charging across the Rockies.
One light, waking up rooftops, under each one, a story
told by our silent gestures moving behind windows.

My face, your face, millions of faces in morning’s mirrors,
each one yawning to life, crescendoing into our day:
pencil-yellow school buses, the rhythm of traffic lights,
fruit stands: apples, limes, and oranges arrayed like rainbows
begging our praise. Silver trucks heavy with oil or paper—
bricks or milk, teeming over highways alongside us,
on our way to clean tables, read ledgers, or save lives—
to teach geometry, or ring-up groceries as my mother did
for twenty years, so I could write this poem.

All of us as vital as the one light we move through,
the same light on blackboards with lessons for the day:
equations to solve, history to question, or atoms imagined,
the “I have a dream” we keep dreaming,
or the impossible vocabulary of sorrow that won’t explain
the empty desks of twenty children marked absent
today, and forever. Many prayers, but one light
breathing color into stained glass windows,
life into the faces of bronze statues, warmth
onto the steps of our museums and park benches
as mothers watch children slide into the day.

One ground. Our ground, rooting us to every stalk
of corn, every head of wheat sown by sweat
and hands, hands gleaning coal or planting windmills
in deserts and hilltops that keep us warm, hands
digging trenches, routing pipes and cables, hands
as worn as my father’s cutting sugarcane
so my brother and I could have books and shoes.

The dust of farms and deserts, cities and plains
mingled by one wind—our breath. Breathe. Hear it
through the day’s gorgeous din of honking cabs,
buses launching down avenues, the symphony
of footsteps, guitars, and screeching subways,
the unexpected song bird on your clothes line.

Hear: squeaky playground swings, trains whistling,
or whispers across café tables, Hear: the doors we open
for each other all day, saying: hello / shalom,
buon giorno / howdy / namaste / or buenos días
in the language my mother taught me—in every language
spoken into one wind carrying our lives
without prejudice, as these words break from my lips.

One sky: since the Appalachians and Sierras claimed
their majesty, and the Mississippi and Colorado worked
their way to the sea. Thank the work of our hands:
weaving steel into bridges, finishing one more report
for the boss on time, stitching another wound
or uniform, the first brush stroke on a portrait,
or the last floor on the Freedom Tower
jutting into a sky that yields to our resilience.

One sky, toward which we sometimes lift our eyes
tired from work: some days guessing at the weather
of our lives, some days giving thanks for a love
that loves you back, sometimes praising a mother
who knew how to give, or forgiving a father
who couldn’t give what you wanted.

We head home: through the gloss of rain or weight
of snow, or the plum blush of dusk, but always—home,
always under one sky, our sky. And always one moon
like a silent drum tapping on every rooftop
and every window, of one country—all of us—
facing the stars
hope—a new constellation
waiting for us to map it,
waiting for us to name it—together

Watch Richard Blanco read “One Today” at President Obama’s inauguration in 2013:

Is this the Region, this the Soil, the Clime,
Said then the lost Arch-Angel, this the seat
That we must change for Heav’n, this mournful gloom
For that celestial light? Be it so, since he
Who now is Sovran can dispose and bid
What shall be right: fardest from him is best
Whom reason hath equald, force hath made supream
Above his equals. Farewel happy Fields
Where Joy for ever dwells: Hail horrours, hail
Infernal world, and thou profoundest Hell
Receive thy new Possessor: One who brings
A mind not to be chang’d by Place or Time.
The mind is its own place, and in it self
Can make a Heav’n of Hell, a Hell of Heav’n.
What matter where, if I be still the same,
And what I should be, all but less then he
Whom Thunder hath made greater? Here at least
We shall be free; th’ Almighty hath not built
Here for his envy, will not drive us hence:
Here we may reign secure, and in my choyce
To reign is worth ambition though in Hell:
Better to reign in Hell, then serve in Heav’n.
But wherefore let we then our faithful friends,
Th’ associates and copartners of our loss
Lye thus astonisht on th’ oblivious Pool,
And call them not to share with us their part
In this unhappy Mansion, or once more
With rallied Arms to try what may be yet
Regaind in Heav’n, or what more lost in Hell?

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

I measure every Grief I meet
With narrow, probing, eyes – 
I wonder if It weighs like Mine – 
Or has an Easier size.

I wonder if They bore it long – 
Or did it just begin – 
I could not tell the Date of Mine – 
It feels so old a pain – 

I wonder if it hurts to live – 
And if They have to try – 
And whether – could They choose between – 
It would not be – to die – 

I note that Some – gone patient long – 
At length, renew their smile –  
An imitation of a Light
That has so little Oil – 

I wonder if when Years have piled –  
Some Thousands – on the Harm –  
That hurt them early – such a lapse
Could give them any Balm –  

Or would they go on aching still
Through Centuries of Nerve – 
Enlightened to a larger Pain –  
In Contrast with the Love –  

The Grieved – are many – I am told –  
There is the various Cause –  
Death – is but one – and comes but once –  
And only nails the eyes –  

There’s Grief of Want – and grief of Cold –  
A sort they call “Despair” –  
There’s Banishment from native Eyes – 
In sight of Native Air –  

And though I may not guess the kind –  
Correctly – yet to me
A piercing Comfort it affords
In passing Calvary –  

To note the fashions – of the Cross –  
And how they’re mostly worn –  
Still fascinated to presume
That Some – are like my own – 

Before you came,
things were as they should be:
the sky was the dead-end of sight,
the road was just a road, wine merely wine.

Now everything is like my heart,
a color at the edge of blood:
the grey of your absence, the color of poison, of thorns,
the gold when we meet, the season ablaze,
the yellow of autumn, the red of flowers, of flames,
and the black when you cover the earth
with the coal of dead fires.

And the sky, the road, the glass of wine?
The sky is a shirt wet with tears,
the road a vein about to break,
and the glass of wine a mirror in which
the sky, the road, the world keep changing.

Don’t leave now that you’re here—
Stay. So the world may become like itself again:
so the sky may be the sky,
the road a road,
and the glass of wine not a mirror, just a glass of wine.

I went down to the river,
I set down on the bank.
I tried to think but couldn’t,
So I jumped in and sank.

I came up once and hollered!
I came up twice and cried!
If that water hadn’t a-been so cold
I might’ve sunk and died.

     But it was      Cold in that water!      It was cold!

I took the elevator
Sixteen floors above the ground.
I thought about my baby
And thought I would jump down.

I stood there and I hollered!
I stood there and I cried!
If it hadn’t a-been so high
I might’ve jumped and died.

     But it was      High up there!      It was high!

So since I'm still here livin’,
I guess I will live on.
I could’ve died for love—
But for livin’ I was born

Though you may hear me holler,
And you may see me cry—
I’ll be dogged, sweet baby,
If you gonna see me die.

     Life is fine!      Fine as wine!      Life is fine!

Looking up at the stars, I know quite well
That, for all they care, I can go to hell,
But on earth indifference is the least
We have to dread from man or beast.

How should we like it were stars to burn
With a passion for us we could not return?
If equal affection cannot be,
Let the more loving one be me.

Admirer as I think I am
Of stars that do not give a damn,
I cannot, now I see them, say
I missed one terribly all day.

Were all stars to disappear or die,
I should learn to look at an empty sky
And feel its total dark sublime,
Though this might take me a little time.

^{An original poem written for the inaugural reading of Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith at the Library of Congress.}

There’s a poem in this place—

in the footfalls in the halls

in the quiet beat of the seats.

It is here, at the curtain of day,

where America writes a lyric

you must whisper to say.

There’s a poem in this place—

in the heavy grace,

the lined face of this noble building,

collections burned and reborn twice.

There’s a poem in Boston’s Copley Square

where protest chants

tear through the air

like sheets of rain,

where love of the many

swallows hatred of the few.

There’s a poem in Charlottesville

where tiki torches string a ring of flame

tight round the wrist of night

where men so white they gleam blue—

seem like statues

where men heap that long wax burning

ever higher

where Heather Heyer

blooms forever in a meadow of resistance.

There’s a poem in the great sleeping giant

of Lake Michigan, defiantly raising

its big blue head to Milwaukee and Chicago—

a poem begun long ago, blazed into frozen soil,

strutting upward and aglow.

There’s a poem in Florida, in East Texas

where streets swell into a nexus

of rivers, cows afloat like mottled buoys in the brown,

where courage is now so common

that 23-year-old Jesus Contreras rescues people from floodwaters.

There’s a poem in Los Angeles

yawning wide as the Pacific tide

where a single mother swelters

in a windowless classroom, teaching

black and brown students in Watts

to spell out their thoughts

so her daughter might write

this poem for you.             

There's a lyric in California

where thousands of students march for blocks,

undocumented and unafraid;

where my friend Rosa finds the power to blossom

in deadlock, her spirit the bedrock of her community.

She knows hope is like a stubborn

ship gripping a dock,

a truth: that you can’t stop a dreamer

or knock down a dream.

How could this not be her city

su nación

our country

our America,

our American lyric to write—

a poem by the people, the poor,

the Protestant, the Muslim, the Jew,

the native, the immigrant,

the black, the brown, the blind, the brave,

the undocumented and undeterred,

the woman, the man, the nonbinary,

the white, the trans,

the ally to all of the above

and more?

Tyrants fear the poet.

Now that we know it

we can’t blow it.

We owe it

to show it

not slow it

although it

hurts to sew it

when the world

skirts below it.       

Hope—

we must bestow it

like a wick in the poet

so it can grow, lit,

bringing with it

stories to rewrite—

the story of a Texas city depleted but not defeated

a history written that need not be repeated

a nation composed but not yet completed.

There’s a poem in this place—

a poem in America

a poet in every American

who rewrites this nation, who tells

a story worthy of being told on this minnow of an earth

to breathe hope into a palimpsest of time—

a poet in every American

who sees that our poem penned

doesn’t mean our poem’s end.

There’s a place where this poem dwells—

it is here, it is now, in the yellow song of dawn’s bell

where we write an American lyric

we are just beginning to tell.

Well, son, I’ll tell you: 
Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.
It’s had tacks in it,
And splinters,
And boards torn up,
And places with no carpet on the floor—
Bare;
But all the time
I’se been a’climbin’ on,
And reachin’ landin’s,
And turnin’ corners, 
And sometimes goin’ in the dark, 
Where there ain’t been no light.
So boy, don’t you turn back;
Don’t you sit down on the steps, 
’Cause you finds it’s kinder hard;
Don’t you fall now—
For I’se still goin’, honey,
I’se still climbin’,
And life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.

And a woman who held a babe against her bosom said, Speak to us of Children.
     And he said:
     Your children are not your children.
     They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
     They come through you but not from you,
     And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

     You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
     For they have their own thoughts.
     You may house their bodies but not their souls,
     For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
     You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.
     For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
     You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.
     The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.
     Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness;
     For even as He loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable.

It is difficult to know what to do with so much happiness.
With sadness there is something to rub against,
a wound to tend with lotion and cloth.
When the world falls in around you, you have pieces to pick up,
something to hold in your hands, like ticket stubs or change.

But happiness floats.
It doesn’t need you to hold it down.
It doesn’t need anything.
Happiness lands on the roof of the next house, singing,
and disappears when it wants to.
You are happy either way.
Even the fact that you once lived in a peaceful tree house
and now live over a quarry of noise and dust
cannot make you unhappy.
Everything has a life of its own,
it too could wake up filled with possibilities
of coffee cake and ripe peaches,
and love even the floor which needs to be swept,
the soiled linens and scratched records . . .

Since there is no place large enough
to contain so much happiness,
you shrug, you raise your hands, and it flows out of you
into everything you touch. You are not responsible.
You take no credit, as the night sky takes no credit
for the moon, but continues to hold it, and share it,
and in that way, be known.

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.
Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to mail letters and purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
It is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.

Out of the night that covers me,   

  Black as the Pit from pole to pole,   

I thank whatever gods may be   

  For my unconquerable soul.   

In the fell clutch of circumstance 

  I have not winced nor cried aloud.   

Under the bludgeonings of chance   

  My head is bloody, but unbowed.   

Beyond this place of wrath and tears   

  Looms but the Horror of the shade, 

And yet the menace of the years   

  Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.   

It matters not how strait the gate,   

  How charged with punishments the scroll,   

I am the master of my fate:

  I am the captain of my soul.

O Me! O life! of the questions of these recurring,
Of the endless trains of the faithless, of cities fill’d with the foolish,
Of myself forever reproaching myself, (for who more foolish than I, and who more faithless?)
Of eyes that vainly crave the light, of the objects mean, of the struggle ever renew’d,
Of the poor results of all, of the plodding and sordid crowds I see around me,
Of the empty and useless years of the rest, with the rest me intertwined,
The question, O me! so sad, recurring—What good amid these, O me, O life?

Answer.

That you are here—that life exists and identity,
That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.

Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

In Flanders fields the poppies blow

Between the crosses, row on row,

    That mark our place; and in the sky

    The larks, still bravely singing, fly

Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago

We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,

    Loved and were loved, and now we lie

        In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe: 

To you from failing hands we throw

    The torch; be yours to hold it high. 

    If ye break faith with us who die

We shall not sleep, though poppies grow

        In Flanders fields.

You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I’ll rise.

Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
’Cause I walk like I’ve got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.
Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I’ll rise.

Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops,
Weakened by my soulful cries?

Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don’t you take it awful hard
’Cause I laugh like I’ve got gold mines
Diggin’ in my own backyard.

You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I’ll rise.

Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I’ve got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?

Out of the huts of history’s shame
I rise
Up from a past that’s rooted in pain
I rise
I’m a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.

Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.

Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.

(America never was America to me.)

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed—
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.

(It never was America to me.)

O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.

(There’s never been equality for me,
Nor freedom in this “homeland of the free.”)

Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?
And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?

I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slavery’s scars.
I am the red man driven from the land,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek—
And finding only the same old stupid plan
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.

I am the young man, full of strength and hope,
Tangled in that ancient endless chain
Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!
Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!
Of work the men! Of take the pay!
Of owning everything for one’s own greed!

I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.
I am the worker sold to the machine.
I am the Negro, servant to you all.
I am the people, humble, hungry, mean—
Hungry yet today despite the dream.
Beaten yet today—O, Pioneers!
I am the man who never got ahead,
The poorest worker bartered through the years.

Yet I’m the one who dreamt our basic dream
In the Old World while still a serf of kings,
Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,
That even yet its mighty daring sings
In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned
That’s made America the land it has become.
O, I’m the man who sailed those early seas
In search of what I meant to be my home—
For I’m the one who left dark Ireland’s shore,
And Poland’s plain, and England’s grassy lea,
And torn from Black Africa’s strand I came
To build a “homeland of the free.”

The free?

Who said the free? Not me?
Surely not me? The millions on relief today?
The millions shot down when we strike?
The millions who have nothing for our pay?
For all the dreams we’ve dreamed
And all the songs we’ve sung
And all the hopes we’ve held
And all the flags we’ve hung,
The millions who have nothing for our pay—
Except the dream that’s almost dead today.

O, let America be America again—
The land that never has been yet—
And yet must be—the land where  every  man is free.
The land that’s mine—the poor man’s, Indian’s, Negro’s, ME—
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.

Sure, call me any ugly name you choose—
The steel of freedom does not stain.
From those who live like leeches on the people’s lives,
We must take back our land again,
America!

O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath—
America will be!

Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain—
All, all the stretch of these great green states—
And make America again!

I divested myself of despair
and fear when I came here.

Now there is no more catching
one's own eye in the mirror,

there are no bad books, no plastic,
no insurance premiums, and of course

no illness. Contrition 
does not exist, nor gnashing

of teeth. No one howls as the first
clod of earth hits the casket.

The poor we no longer have with us. 
Our calm hearts strike only the hour,

and God, as promised, proves
to be mercy clothed in light.

^{(To F. S.)}

I loved my friend. 
He went away from me. 
There’s nothing more to say. 
The poem ends, 
Soft as it began,—
I loved my friend. 

The past and present wilt—I have fill’d them, emptied them.
And proceed to fill my next fold of the future.

Listener up there! what have you to confide to me?
Look in my face while I snuff the sidle of evening,
(Talk honestly, no one else hears you, and I stay only a minute longer.)

Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)

I concentrate toward them that are nigh, I wait on the door-slab.

Who has done his day’s work? who will soonest be through with his supper?
Who wishes to walk with me?

Will you speak before I am gone? will you prove already too late?

The world begins at a kitchen table. No matter what, we must eat to live.

The gifts of earth are brought and prepared, set on the table. So it has been since creation, and it will go on.

We chase chickens or dogs away from it. Babies teethe at the corners. They scrape their knees under it.

It is here that children are given instructions on what it means to be human. We make men at it, we make women.

At this table we gossip, recall enemies and the ghosts of lovers.

Our dreams drink coffee with us as they put their arms around our children. They laugh with us at our poor falling-down selves and as we put ourselves back together once again at the table.

This table has been a house in the rain, an umbrella in the sun.

Wars have begun and ended at this table. It is a place to hide in the shadow of terror. A place to celebrate the terrible victory.

We have given birth on this table, and have prepared our parents for burial here.

At this table we sing with joy, with sorrow. We pray of suffering and remorse. We give thanks.

Perhaps the world will end at the kitchen table, while we are laughing and crying, eating of the last sweet bite.

Say tomorrow doesn’t come.
Say the moon becomes an icy pit.
Say the sweet-gum tree is petrified.
Say the sun’s a foul black tire fire.
Say the owl’s eyes are pinpricks.
Say the raccoon’s a hot tar stain.
Say the shirt’s plastic ditch-litter.
Say the kitchen’s a cow’s corpse.
Say we never get to see it: bright
future, stuck like a bum star, never
coming close, never dazzling.
Say we never meet her. Never him.
Say we spend our last moments staring
at each other, hands knotted together,
clutching the dog, watching the sky burn.
Say, It doesn’t matter. Say, That would be
enough. Say you’d still want this: us alive,
right here, feeling lucky.

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Because I could not stop for Death—
He kindly stopped for me—
The Carriage held but just Ourselves— 
And Immortality.

We slowly drove—He knew no haste
And I had put away
My labor and my leisure too,
For His Civility—

We passed the School, where Children strove
At Recess—in the Ring—
We passed the Fields of Gazing Grain—
We passed the Setting Sun—

Or rather—He passed us—
The Dews drew quivering and chill—
For only Gossamer, my Gown—
My Tippet—only Tulle—

We paused before a House that seemed
A Swelling of the Ground—
The Roof was scarcely visible—
The Cornice—in the Ground—

Since then—’tis Centuries—and yet
Feels shorter than the Day
I first surmised the Horses’ Heads
Were toward Eternity—

Since you ask, most days I cannot remember.
I walk in my clothing, unmarked by that voyage.
Then the almost unnameable lust returns.

Even then I have nothing against life.
I know well the grass blades you mention,
the furniture you have placed under the sun.

But suicides have a special language.
Like carpenters they want to know which tools.
They never ask why build.

Twice I have so simply declared myself,
have possessed the enemy, eaten the enemy,
have taken on his craft, his magic.

In this way, heavy and thoughtful,
warmer than oil or water,
I have rested, drooling at the mouth-hole.

I did not think of my body at needle point.
Even the cornea and the leftover urine were gone.
Suicides have already betrayed the body.

Still-born, they don’t always die,
but dazzled, they can’t forget a drug so sweet
that even children would look on and smile.

To thrust all that life under your tongue!—
that, all by itself, becomes a passion.
Death’s a sad Bone; bruised, you’d say,

and yet she waits for me, year after year,
to so delicately undo an old wound,
to empty my breath from its bad prison.

Balanced there, suicides sometimes meet,
raging at the fruit, a pumped-up moon,
leaving the bread they mistook for a kiss,

leaving the page of the book carelessly open,
something unsaid, the phone off the hook
and the love, whatever it was, an infection.

If you can keep your head when all about you

   Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,

   But make allowance for their doubting too;

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,

   Or, being lied about, don’t deal in lies,

Or, being hated, don’t give way to hating,

   And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;

   If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;

If you can meet with triumph and disaster

   And treat those two impostors just the same;

If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken

   Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,

Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,

   And stoop and build ’em up with wornout tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings

   And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,

And lose, and start again at your beginnings

   And never breathe a word about your loss;

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew

   To serve your turn long after they are gone,

And so hold on when there is nothing in you

   Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on”;

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,

   Or walk with kings—nor lose the common touch;

If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;

   If all men count with you, but none too much;

If you can fill the unforgiving minute

With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run—

   Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,

And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

I’m Nobody! Who are you?

Are you – Nobody – too?

Then there’s a pair of us!

Don’t tell! they’d advertise – you know!

How dreary – to be – Somebody!

How public – like a Frog –

To tell one’s name – the livelong June –

To an admiring Bog!

Lift every voice and sing,
Till earth and heaven ring,
Ring with the harmonies of Liberty;
Let our rejoicing rise
High as the list’ning skies,
Let it resound loud as the rolling sea.
Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us,
Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us;
Facing the rising sun of our new day begun,
Let us march on till victory is won.

Stony the road we trod,
Bitter the chast’ning rod,
Felt in the days when hope unborn had died;
Yet with a steady beat,
Have not our weary feet
Come to the place for which our fathers sighed?
We have come over a way that with tears has been watered.
We have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered,
Out from the gloomy past,
Till now we stand at last
Where the white gleam of our bright star is cast.

God of our weary years,
God of our silent tears,
Thou who hast brought us thus far on the way;
Thou who hast by Thy might,
Led us into the light,
Keep us forever in the path, we pray.
Lest our feet stray from the places, our God, where we met Thee,
Lest our hearts, drunk with the wine of the world, we forget Thee;
Shadowed beneath Thy hand,
May we forever stand,
True to our God,
True to our native land.

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore—
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door—
“’Tis some visitor,” I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door—
               Only this and nothing more.”

Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December;
And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.
Eagerly I wished the morrow;—vainly I had sought to borrow
From my books surcease of sorrow—sorrow for the lost Lenore—
For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore—
               Nameless here for evermore.

And the silken, sad, uncertain rustling of each purple curtain
Thrilled me—filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before;
So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating,
“’Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door—
Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door;—
               This it is and nothing more.”

Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer,
“Sir,” said I, “or Madam, truly your forgiveness I implore;
But the fact is I was napping, and so gently you came rapping,
And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door,
That I scarce was sure I heard you”—here I opened wide the door;—
               Darkness there and nothing more.

Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing,
Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before;
But the silence was unbroken, and the stillness gave no token,
And the only word there spoken was the whispered word, “Lenore?”
This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word, “Lenore!”—
               Merely this and nothing more.

Back into the chamber turning, all my soul within me burning,
Soon again I heard a tapping somewhat louder than before.
“Surely,” said I, “surely that is something at my window lattice;
Let me see, then, what thereat is, and this mystery explore—
Let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore;—
               ’Tis the wind and nothing more!”

Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter,
In there stepped a stately Raven of the saintly days of yore;
Not the least obeisance made he; not a minute stopped or stayed he;
But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door—
Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above my chamber door—
               Perched, and sat, and nothing more.

Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling,
By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore,
“Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou,” I said, “art sure no craven,
Ghastly grim and ancient Raven wandering from the Nightly shore—
Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night’s Plutonian shore!”
               Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.”

Much I marvelled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly,
Though its answer little meaning—little relevancy bore;
For we cannot help agreeing that no living human being
Ever yet was blest with seeing bird above his chamber door—
Bird or beast upon the sculptured bust above his chamber door,
               With such name as “Nevermore.”

But the Raven, sitting lonely on the placid bust, spoke only
That one word, as if his soul in that one word he did outpour.
Nothing further then he uttered—not a feather then he fluttered—
Till I scarcely more than muttered “Other friends have flown before—
On the morrow he will leave me, as my hopes have flown before.”
               Then the bird said “Nevermore.”

Startled at the stillness broken by reply so aptly spoken,
“Doubtless,” said I, “what it utters is its only stock and store
Caught from some unhappy master whom unmerciful Disaster
Followed fast and followed faster till his songs one burden bore—
Till the dirges of his Hope that melancholy burden bore
               Of ‘Never—nevermore.’”

But the Raven still beguiling my sad fancy into smiling,
Straight I wheeled a cushioned seat in front of bird, and bust and door;
Then, upon the velvet sinking, I betook myself to linking
Fancy unto fancy, thinking what this ominous bird of yore—
What this grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt and ominous bird of yore
               Meant in croaking “Nevermore.”

This I sat engaged in guessing, but no syllable expressing
To the fowl whose fiery eyes now burned into my bosom’s core;
This and more I sat divining, with my head at ease reclining
On the cushion’s velvet lining that the lamp-light gloated o’er,
But whose velvet violet lining with the lamp-light gloating o'er,
               She shall press, ah, nevermore!

Then, methought, the air grew denser, perfumed from an unseen censer
Swung by Seraphim whose foot-falls tinkled on the tufted floor.
“Wretch,” I cried, “thy God hath lent thee—by these angels he hath sent thee
Respite—respite and nepenthe, from thy memories of Lenore;
Quaff, oh quaff this kind nepenthe and forget this lost Lenore!”
               Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.”

“Prophet!” said I, “thing of evil!—prophet still, if bird or devil!—
Whether Tempter sent, or whether tempest tossed thee here ashore,
Desolate yet all undaunted, on this desert land enchanted—
On this home by Horror haunted—tell me truly, I implore—
Is there—is there balm in Gilead?—tell me—tell me, I implore!”
               Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.”

“Prophet!” said I, “thing of evil—prophet still, if bird or devil!
By that Heaven that bends above us—by that God we both adore—
Tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within the distant Aidenn,
It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels name Lenore—
Clasp a rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore.”
               Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.”

“Be that word our sign in parting, bird or fiend!” I shrieked, upstarting—
“Get thee back into the tempest and the Night’s Plutonian shore!
Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken!
Leave my loneliness unbroken!—quit the bust above my door!
Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!”
               Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.”

And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting
On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door;
And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon’s that is dreaming,
And the lamp-light o’er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor;
And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor
               Shall be lifted—nevermore!

The time will come
when, with elation,
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror,
and each will smile at the other’s welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

^{translated from the Arabic by Abdullah al-Udhari} 

1 

We miss you like the earth longing for rain, and without you we have no more books nor revelations. 

2 

I wish death had swept us all away before you were buried and  mourned.

إنّا فقدناك فقْدَ الأرضِ وابلها
 وغابَ مذ غبتَ عنّا الوحيُ والكتبُ
 فليتَ قبلَك كان الموتُ صادَفَنا
 لما نعيتَ وحالَت دونك الكتبُ

These things collect, 
                          my nervous system 
            ringing sounds of a too busy brain, 
hollow silences from Africa to here, across 
water slapping up the bay to where the capitol  
was set in stone now being ground into sand. 

A bird finds the nest inside me, flutters 
into the solar plexus, and I think of the sun, 
fire and hearts, what lives inside the character

                                   ⽕   
for fire as we interrogate grief. I question 
tree branches weighed down with snow 
melting until the bending branches soften 
against protests of the dead, in the middle, 
the heart’s mind above the rootedness. 

                                    At night I name 
            the cacophony of being broken—
alcohol, heroin, cocaine, all the poison poured 
into all the jagged places claiming our hopes 
for children dying in this apocalypse, our sins 
haunting nameless birds flying back to be whole. 

            Sing now, children. You will be saved. 

—March 1, 2019

^{translated from the Spanish by Ana Portnoy Brimmer}

^{Unbridled, I come 
with a planetary pain 
I want to bound … 
—Dalia Nieves Albert} 

I carry a hollow. 

Fill it with everything big and small 
I encounter along the way 
only to realize 
not everything that fits in my pocket 
is mine to keep.

 

Bolsillo

^{Yo vengo desmedida 
con un dolor de mundo 
que quiero delimitar… 
—Dalia Nieves Albert}

Cargo con un hueco. 

Lo lleno de todo lo grande y pequeño 
que me encuentra en el camino 
para justo darme cuenta 
no todo lo que cabe en el bolsillo 
me pertenece.

^{translated from the Spanish by Ana Portnoy Brimmer}

I’ve watched myself 
be cheap astonishment. 

I’ve watched myself be uneven heart 
anachronistic clumsy big small. 

I’ve been vertigo 
on the flesh of the tongue. 

As well as 
visceral friend 
mistake. 

I’ve donned flowers in my eyes 
sadness in my hands and posture. 

When looked at 
I became intended cosmos 
trace of existence. 

Facing the mirror I knew 

I could’ve been born 
on the other side. 

Never having learned of words. 

I could’ve easily
borne another name.
 

Otro nombre

Me he visto ser 
la barata forma de sorprenderme. 

Me he visto ser corazón dispar 
anacrónico torpe grande pequeño. 

He sido vértigo 
en la carne de la lengua. 

También 
víscera amiga 
equivocación. 

He llevado flores en los ojos 
tristeza en las manos y en la postura. 

Me miraron 
y fui intención de cosmos 
marca de paso. 

Frente al espejo supe 

pude haber nacido 
justo en el otro lado. 

Jamás haberme enterado de la palabra. 

Fácilmente pude haber tenido 
otro nombre.

 

Copper keeps life from my womb; aluminum  
fills my pores, silver my teeth. My blood won’t hold iron, 
so I take it daily. Food brings a sickness I can’t measure 
under my tongue, only on my waning waist. Some metal 

belongs in the body. The day a grate raised my skirt 
on the street, I noticed only one rush of air between  ore
and whore. The boy who learns to caress his face with a blade 
will grow into a man I’ll pay to slice my skin with steel. Beauty 

is no alchemy: it merely means making space for more things 
that shine. Like the ancient statues men scrapped for daggers. 
Like powder packed into bullets, their touch so intimate
it kills. Like any body in this millennium, I’ll survive 

in silicon chips after death. Until then, lead me 
somewhere precious. Guide me with ungloved hands.

We sit on our skeletons’ bones. 
We hear with our skeletons’ bones.
We speak of beauty by moving our jaws and our teeth.

The original meaning of Paradise: a place, 
a walled garden. 
Our lives, our stories, this hour inside one.
A staircase from Piranesi. A hummingbird drinking.

Outside it, vanishing species and rivers.
Outside it, Nanjing, Ninevah, Dresden.
Outside it, Gaza, Sudan, Myanmar, Kyiv. Here.

The world starts and ends, starts, ends, ends again,
restarts.  

A kalpa is brief, and wall-less.

Unborn ones, take nothing for granted.
Not nectar, not thirst.

May your lives be uneclipsed, your failures be passing.

May you have your portions of beauty, of grief, 
in a garden whose plants and birds I cannot imagine. 

If I could be brave enough and live long enough I could crawl inside the life of every man, woman and child in America. After I had gone within them I could be born out of them. I could become something the like of which has never been seen before. We would see then what America is like.

And isn’t everything risk?

The beloved lives 
Then dies,
Then (if we’re lucky) 
Rises again 
Into a poem or song

Or into the world 
In some other form 
Impossible to predict.

Simplest story, oldest tale: 

Sparrows sing it
From every hedge;

And swallows, also, 
From their nests on the ledge. 

must look so small, undetectable even,
from the vantage point where I imagine 

a god could see me, and I do sometimes  
imagine a god like a sentient star

out beyond where our instruments 
could find it, then I talk myself 

out of the image. Out of the concept
entirely. From a distance, I know 

I’m an ant tunneling my way 
through sand between plastic panels, 

watched—or not—from outside. 
My puny movements on this planet, 

all the things I’ve done or built 
with my own body or mind, seem 

like nothing at all. But from the inside 
this life feels enormous, unlimited 

by the self—by selfness—
vaster even than the sparkling 

dark it can’t be seen from.

We stay in bed all day.

The pen stands up & writes the poem
without me.

Your fingers graze my back.

I pull your body over me
like a roof, mistake

your drumming heart
for rain.

While I ate my oatmeal, I saw Hope on the milk carton.
What’s missing: hope, the milk carton.

I tried to write hope into a poem, but couldn’t.

The words scattered like iron filings anytime my hands
came near them. Everything has its own magnetic field of sadness.

A friend told me there are mountains in Upstate New York
with no fossils, formed before life.

What feels impossible: time, to be stone-clean, to be
unmovable.

Today’s losses were the heaviest they’ve ever been.

I tried to punch pain’s ticket, make it leave on
clear tracks down my cheeks, but it wouldn’t.

Still, days. Still days. I am full of pain & fossils.

I think I gave up a few lines ago, the poem on grief,
or was it hope?

I turn off the lights. The poem glows.

For most of my life I was a liar, yes,
because I had to be, but I,
for most of my life, was still
a liar, lied even
to myself. For a while, I hated me.
Back then I hated
the secret me, hated me
secretly,
only to now look back & hate the me
that lied to me, to others.
Which me counts
as memory? Which lie was the I? The eye
watching me.
When I was finally ready, I woke
in my bed. A giant hummingbird
floated above me, long lancelike beak
piercing my body. It drank
from the red nectar of my chest.
Its long, forked tongue—yes two,
yes one.
It did not take my hate, but placed
a seed.

^{translated from the Arabic by Yasmine Seale}

In company
  we spoke in code,
in inklings
   without ink.
Our eyes alone
   let slip the ache—
like phantom scribbles on
the heart’s blank page.


 

تَكاتَبنا بِرَمزٍ في الحُضورِ وَإِيحاءٍ يَلوحُ بِلا سُطورِ

سِوى مُقَلٍ تُخَبِّرُ ما عَناها بِكَفِّ الوَهمِ في وَرِقِ الصُدورِ

 

^{translated from the Arabic by Yasmine Seale}

I keep his name
from everyone, but to my soul
I babble on and on
about this crazy passion.
            How I long
for some deserted place
where I could shout his name!
                                          

كَتَمتُ اِسمَ الحَبيبِ عَنِ العِبادِ وَرَدَّدتُ الصَبابَةَ في فُؤادي

فَوا شَوقي إِلى نادٍ خَلِيٍّ لَعَلّي بِاِسمِ مَن أَهوى أُنادي

 

I almost stopped believing in the ocean.
Imagine that. I almost stopped believing
in the music of such massive natural splendor.
I had lost sight of it, lost sight of hope
because innocent people were killed
by people in masks, hiding their faces,
their shame parading as providence,
their weakness posing as policy.
But then, I remembered the tides.
I was restored by the courage of poets
whose songs sounded like ocean waves
guided by the moon. Even now, there is music.
Children laughing on the swings, a student
learning the saxophone, a woman reading
her rough draft by the lake, a father whistling
a love song in his native language.
Courage is from the Latin word  cor,
which means heart, which means we are a heart of poets.
As in, take courage, take heart. As in, the widow
was grateful for your encouragement, your giving heart.
As in, the heart of your convictions.
What I mean is: we are made of love
and therefore larger than their terror.
As a great poet said, they can cut back all of the flowers,
but they cannot hold back spring.
We are a massive natural splendor, too.
In the end, all we are is love and love and love.
In the end, the ocean and the music might save us.
Meet me at the beach. Bring your light.
Bring your songs. I’ll wait for you.

^{translated from the Spanish by Manuel Iris and Kevin McHugh}

Sometimes I’m afraid you will talk
in the language in which I cannot dream.

I almost always wish
that you live first
the language of the house,
the one in which I lull you to sleep,
in which I imagine you
telling me your things.

(You still do not know
that there is a different music, outside)

Lately
I have been afraid of the months
because you were born here,
in this place, in this language
in which I am a foreigner

and I want
to live
in your world
in the language that you will have,
within your words.

I am afraid
that you will also know
the impossibility of belonging.

But you will build your own homeland, like anyone else.

If someone asks you where are you from,
tell them that you came from your father’s heart,
a heart that would learn any language
to talk with you.

El idioma de la casa

A veces tengo miedo de que hables 
el idioma en el que no puedo soñar.

Casi siempre deseo  
que primero vivas 
el idioma de la casa,  
el mismo en que te arrullo, 
en el que te imagino  
platicándome tus cosas. 

(Todavía no distingues  
que afuera hay otra música)

Últimamente 
tengo miedo de los meses  
porque tú has nacido aquí, 
en este sitio, en este idioma  
en el que soy un extranjero

y yo quiero  
vivir dentro  
de tu mundo, 
del idioma que tendrás,  
de tus palabras. 

Me da miedo 
que conozcas 
la imposibilidad de pertenecer.

Pero te harás tu patria, como cualquiera.

Si te preguntan de dónde eres  
diles que has venido del corazón de tu padre, 
de un corazón  
que aprendería cualquier idioma 
para hablar contigo.

“You been eating good, huh?”
She says it with a chuckle,
but I hear the verdict
in her eyes,
measured like scales
that don’t ever read kindness.

I look in the mirror,
towel slipping—
there it is again:
that soft fold
above my jeans,
that dinner-roll curve
no one asked for,
no one praises.

It jiggles when I laugh.
So I stop laughing.

Mama says it like she’s helping,
like the shame
is some kind of inheritance
she meant to pass down.
And I take it—
quiet,
tight in the throat,
sweeter than sugar
but heavier than truth.

I pinch it
in front of the mirror.
Roll it between fingers
like dough
I never asked to knead.
Call it ugly.
Call it mine.
Call it “I’ll start tomorrow.”

I suck in my stomach
like it’s a sin.
Smile like it ain’t killing me.
But some days,
I want to love this body
like it’s sacred.
Like these thick thighs were carved
by God’s own hands.
Like this belly
was a story
not a stain.

Mama meant well.
But so did I.
And I’m still learning
how to call myself
enough
before the world
or her mouth
gets there first.

I never saw a wild thing
sorry for itself.
A small bird will drop frozen dead from a bough
without ever having felt sorry for itself.

You have to imagine it:

Who said you were too dark/too
Large? Too queer/too loud?

Who said you were too poor/
Too strange? Too fat?

You have to imagine it:

Who said you must keep quiet?
Who heard your story, then
Rolled their eyes?

Who tried to change your name
To invisible?

You’ve got to imagine:

Who heard your name
And refused to pronounce it?
Who checked their watch
And said “not now”?

James Baldwin wrote:

“The place in which I’ll fit
Will not exist
Until I make it.”

New York, city of invention,
Roiling town, refresher
And re-newer,

New York, city of the real,
Where the canyons
Whisper in a hundred
Tongues,

New York, 
Where your lucky self
Waits for your
Arrival,

Where there is always soil
For your root.

This is our time.

The taste of us/the spice of us
The hollers and the rhythms and
The beats of us.

In the echo of our
Ancestors,
Who made certain we know
Who we are.

City of Insistence,
City of Resistance,

You have to imagine:

An Army that wins without
Firing a bullet,

A joy that wears down
The rock of no.

Up from insults,
Up from blocked doors,
Up from trick bags,
Up from fear/up from shame,
Up from the way it was done before.
You have to imagine:

That space they said wasn’t yours.
That time they said you’d never own.
The invisible city lit, on its way.
This moment is our proof.

I’ve been thinking about the way, when you walk
down a crowded aisle, people pull in their legs
to let you by. Or how strangers still say “bless you”
when someone sneezes, a leftover
from the Bubonic plague. “Don’t die,” we are saying.
And sometimes, when you spill lemons
from your grocery bag, someone else will help you
pick them up. Mostly, we don’t want to harm each other.
We want to be handed our cup of coffee hot,
and to say thank you to the person handing it. To smile
at them and for them to smile back. For the waitress
to call us honey when she sets down the bowl of clam chowder,
and for the driver in the red pick-up truck to let us pass.
We have so little of each other, now. So far
from tribe and fire. Only these brief moments of exchange.
What if they are the true dwelling of the holy, these
fleeting temples we make together when we say, “Here,
have my seat,” “Go ahead—you first,” “I like your hat.”

I always wanted a daughter, which is 
to say, I wanted a better self,

flicked from my marrow—made 
flesh. I wanted this bone-of-my-bones

to move in the world, exceptional 
and unharmed. Not this world. But a world

almost exactly unlike it. Same 
paved streets and street cafés, same slow

unfurl of spring. Only, in that world, 
the green of field and orchard is still wanton

with winged things, their bellies powdered 
with the flowers’ gold dust.

Daughter, I say, and I mean a list 
of what-ifs, a cacophony of sorrows.

I imagine her tall, lithe as willows. 
When I say Daughter,

I mean a match, ready to strike herself 
against the world that isn’t

this one. I mean luck. I mean a river 
empty of drowning. I mean an arrow

aimed at an unnamed star. Someone 
once said a daughter is a needle in the heart.

I would take that needle, sew her a dress 
of yarrow and blood.

In the world not this one, 
I have a daughter. She is a long braid,

a memory of fire. She goes before me, 
shining darkly, into a city—

of gold, of salt—that I will never see.

Here I am sorting old documents after breakfast.  
And here you are—bright as a bee sting!— 
clinging to my daughter’s souvenir birth certificate 
three decades old. How bold you seem, Dead 
Name, anchoring dates. How bold, corroborating  
vitals: 21 inches, 8 pounds 3 ounces, male, etc.  
How bold, floating above her tiny footprints. 

Of course, I love my daughter and her new  
name. But I still have a reluctant soft spot  
for you, splashed with myth as you are, citizen 
of the sea, the green of Wales poking through. 
Now you are cypher and palimpsest, collateral  
damage, slippage of signifier and signified.  
Syllables we’ve scrubbed from our vocabulary.

To show solidarity with her, maybe I should  
bury the birth certificate, along with her old  
report cards, along with you, out back.  
Dead Name, I swear it’s nothing personal.  
Dead Name, we selected you from a cast  
of 1000s. Dead Name, truth is I rarely think  
of you till one of your accidental appearances. 

Like today. Or like last fall, first day of class.  
I found myself reading you, Dead Name,  
from a list of hopefuls wanting to add. I paused.  
Almost couldn’t say you, like I was dropping  
F-bombs to welcome the class. Said you  
anyway. Your wild syllables waiting to home  
to whoever raised their hand and said I’m here.

I know what it’s like to be an outsider.

I know how English sounds
when every word is only music.

I know how it feels not
to be an American, an English, a French.
Call them 
            Kharejee—Amrikayee, Ingleesee, Faransavi,  
see them 
            see me as alien, immigrant, Iranee.

But I’ve been here too long.
I am now an American
        with an American husband
        and American children …

But mark this—I do not belong anywhere.
I have an accent in every language I speak.

I know it to be true that those who live
As do the grasses and the lilies of the field
Receiving joy from Heaven, sweetly yield
Their joy to Earth, and taking Beauty, give.

But we are gathered for the looms of Fate
That Time with ever-turning multiplying wheels
Spins into complex patterns and conceals
His huge invention with forms intricate.

Each generation blindly fills the plan,
A sorry muddle or an inspiration of God
With many processes from out the sod,
The Earth and Heaven are mingled and made man.

We must be tired and sleepless, gaily sad,
Frothing like waves in clamorous confusion,
A chemistry of subtle interfusion,
Experiments of genius that the ignorant call mad.

We spell the crimes of our unruly days,
We see a fabled Arcady in our mind,
We crave perfection that we may not find.
Time laughs within the clock and Destiny plays.

You peasants and you hermits simple livers!
So picturesquely pure all unconcerned
While we give up our bodies to be burned,
And dredge for treasure in the muddy rivers.

We drink and die and sell ourselves for power,
We hunt with treacherous steps and stealthy knife,
We make a gaudy havoc of our life
And live a thousand ages in an hour.

Our loves are spoilt by introspective guile,
We vivisect our souls with elaborate tools,
We dance in couples to the tune of fools,
And dream of harassed continents the while.

Subconscious visions hold us and we fashion
Delirious verses tortured statues spasms of paint,
Make cryptic perorations of complaint,
Inverted religion and perverted passion.

But since we are children of this age,
In curious ways discovering salvation,
I will not quit my muddled generation,
But ever plead for Beauty in this rage.

Although I know that Nature’s bounty yields
Unto simplicity a beautiful content,
Only when battle breaks me and my strength is spent
Will I give back my body to the fields.

In placid hours well-pleased we dream
Of many a brave unbodied scheme.
But form to lend, pulsed life create,
What unlike things must meet and mate:
A flame to melt—a wind to freeze;
Sad patience—joyous energies;
Humility—yet pride and scorn;
Instinct and study; love and hate;
Audacity—reverence. These must mate,
And fuse with Jacob’s mystic heart,
To wrestle with the angel—Art.

On Ma’s face
There is a book
And life’s preface.
Between these lines
and in these two caves
Life dwells. 
That line is hope.
That one is love. 
That death 
When she smiles, 
She gives hope, 
She gives love 
She gives life,
To life. 

^{July 30, 2012}

And another day in Gaza 
Another day in Palestine
A day in prison 
And we live on
Despite Israel’s very much identified flying objects 
That we see more than our family and friends
And despite Israel’s death sentences
Like lead
Cast upon the head
As we sleep
Like acid rain
Gnawing at our life
Clinging to it like a flea to a kitten
And stuffed in our throats
The moment we say “Amen”
To the prayers of old women and men 
Despite Israel’s birds of death
Hovering only two meters from our breath
From our dreams and prayers
Blocking their ways to God.
Despite that. 
We dream and pray, 
Clinging to life even harder
Every time a dear one’s life 
Is forcibly rooted up. 
We live. 
We live. 
We do. 

^{May 27, 2012}

If I must die, 
you must live
to tell my story
to sell my things
to buy a piece of cloth
and some strings, 
(make it white with a long tail)
so that a child, somewhere in Gaza
while looking heaven in the eye
awaiting his dad who left in a blaze—
and bid no one farewell
not even to his flesh
not even to himself—
sees the kite, my kite you made, flying up above
and thinks for a moment an angel is there
bringing back love
If I must die
let it bring hope
let it be a tale

^{November 27, 2011}

^{To a Friend.}

The shrine is vowed to freedom, but, my friend, 
Freedom is but a means to gain an end. 
Freedom should build the temple, but the shrine 
Be consecrate to thought still more divine. 
The human bliss which angel hopes foresaw 
Is liberty to comprehend the law. 
Give, then, thy book a larger scope and frame, 
Comprising means and end in Truth’s great name.

^{translated from the Spanish by Anthony Geist}

White valleys 
            left behind: 
            they begin to turn into 
rocks, 
            pine trees 
and eagles. 
            Hundreds of years on the road. 
On the way 
            my parents died. 
On the way 
            my children will be born.

Los inmigrantes

Valles blancos 
            han quedado atrás:  
            empiezan a transformarse  
en rocas, 
            pinos  
y águilas. 
            Cientos de años de viaje.  
En el camino 
            han muerto mis padres.  
En el camino 
            nacerán mis hijos. 

^{translated from the French by Youmna Chamieh}

We will no longer be able to think (breathe, words like silence)
Of the too great complication of what it is to live.
The poem will be, more and more blind, nothing but words:
No one will be able to truly hear them.
Something else will come within ruins of time and friendship,
It won’t even be worth saying that we must die,
We will die.

Un jour écrire deviendra trop difficile.

On ne pourra plus penser (respirer, les mots comme du silence)
À la trop grande complication de ce que c’est vivre.
Le poème sera, de plus en plus aveugle, plus rien que des mots :
Personne qui pourra les entendre pour de vrai.
Quelque chose d’autre viendra dans des ruines de temps et d’amitié,
Ce sera même pas la peine de dire qu’il faut mourir,
On mourra.

^{translated from the Arabic by Kareem James Abu-Zeid}

I said these words weren’t needed
as I was sitting there,
where the road veered sharply,
without thinking for a moment
that it might only be a gentle winding.
Yet here I am, new,
like I always was.
Why should I care
if it’s the beating of tambourines
or the striking of tablas
or the madness of zurnas
that’s happening here?
I’m made of earth,
so why should I care
if I’m crumbled
or scattered on the land?

It was in this labyrinth,
in it alone,
that I found my way.

في هذه المتاهة

وكنتُ أجلس في المنعطفات  
وأقول هذا كلامٌ نافِل  
دون أن أُفكّر للحظةٍ بأنّها منحنَيات  
وها أنا أكون جديداً  
كما دوماً كنتُ  
وما هَمَّني ضَربُ دفوفٍ أم قرع طبولٍ أم جنون مزامير  
ما همّني ما همّني  
أنا من ترابٍ  
وما همّني أذبلُ أو أُحطَّم بأرضي  
وفي هذه المتاهة 
فيها وحدها 
وجدتُ طريقي.  

^{—after Akhmadulina}

Some things you don’t come back from.
The body carries on. Of late
it even travels, basks in light.
But knock and there’s no one home.

(How did I love you? With the taste
of iron on my tongue. Try again.
How did I love you? Like a man
destroying what he tries to save.)

The head still does light labor.
But often both the hands fall slack,
and all five senses, in a flock,
go south to weather winter.

There’s a poem I tried to write about
bathing you the last day you were alive.

On one of our drives home:
I want to die without shame.

You didn’t elaborate.
I described standing across from a stranger

paid to do this work, her presence
anchoring me in the task

with you between us.
From this distance I can use the word task.

Your pain the astrologer said A gift
for others

A mixing bowl
filled with warm water

we dipped washcloths into before
wringing them out

rested between your legs.
The phrase utilitarian tenderness served

some containing purpose
I needed at the time.

A great effort
to come up to the surface of yourself

to say what you said to us.
A student writes two lines

about an aging parent
they think are boring and may cut.

That poem did not belong
to language, and surpassed touch

Dough rising somewhere
under a red and white

dishtowel in that bowl

Every morning when the bell rings, I know the day has a calling on me. It says to me, “Look
up little child.” Aren’t you happy, I dialed. I replied, “Just as Happy as Happy can be.” As a matter
of fact, I’ve been thinking that..... Maybe I shall call on the day, and command that energy be
applied to Education in every meaning of the way. For it has unselfishly given us a school of
gifted minds. Presents to present when presentations seem to be running out of time.
Look Up Child! You’re standing in the middle of Midway. If it starts to rain, don’t complain,
simple and plain... Trouble can’t stay. Happy thoughts for the right side of the Brain. All those for
Brain power raised their hands, then the development came. Education meets Innovation. New
classroom tactics. New Installations. ALL this just for us? It must have been a lot of work? Long
hours, days and nights assembling power. The goal is to make Education work. Look Up Child!
Don’t you ever forget, never judge a Book by its cover. Study the sentences, quotations and
parentheses. Stay focused on the subject. Study it. Test time will come. Victory will beat his
drum and when that mighty mountain comes, you won’t be afraid. Then you can run home and
show off the good grades you’ve made. Rewards are reserved for those that pay attention. Eyes
open wide every time school pride is mentioned.

Look Up Child! The children of blessings walk these hallways. Motivating, Understanding,
Shaping, Transforming, Accelerating, Nurturing, Growing, Students is what the hall says. And
that is our Bond. Each one, Teach one. We won’t leave Education undone. Our yard will start to
reflect the Gardens of our Intellect. Seeds will sprout. More precious fruits and vegetables will
grow out, and the students will say, “How plentiful the harvest?” Enough Education to go around.
Isn’t planting a seed in the ground marvelous? And the Day will say, “where there’s no plan
there’s no vision.” Education vs. Elimination. Make a decision.

Look Up Child! Creativity soars on these planes. High altitudes you can reach a star with the
right attitude. We refer to it as Reaching Winners Lane. Determined to pursue learning. Five
hundred horsepower. State of the Art Mustangs. If you build it, students will come and victory
will beat his drum. Then the Day will say, “What a wonderful job you’ve done!” The Mighty
Mountain will know defeat. Education will have reached its peak. “HOORAY! HOORAY! The
children yelled...as Education continued to prevail. Up in the sky! Only to be seen by the trained
eye.

That you are fair or wise is vain,
Or strong, or rich, or generous;
You must have also the untaught strain
That sheds beauty on the rose. 
There is a melody born of melody, 
Which melts the world into a sea. 
Toil could never compass it, 
Art its height could never hit,
It came never out of wit,
But a music music-born
Well may Jove and Juno scorn.
Thy beauty, if it lack the fire
Which drives me mad with sweet desire, 
What boots it? what the soldier’s mail
Unless he conquer and prevail?
What all the goods thy pride which lift, 
If thou pine for another’s gift?
Alas! that one is born in blight,
Victim of perpetual slight;—
When thou lookest in his face,
Thy heart saith, Brother! go thy ways. 
None shall ask thee what thou doest, 
Or care a rush for what thou knowest. 
Or listen when thou repliest,
Or remember where thou liest,
Or how thy supper is sodden,—
And another is born
To make the sun forgotten.
Surely he carries a talisman
Under his tongue;
Broad are his shoulders, and strong, 
And his eye is scornful,
Threatening, and young.
I hold it of little matter,—
Whether your jewel be of pure water,
A rose diamond or a white,—
But whether it dazzle me with light.
I care not how you are drest,
In the coarsest, or in the best,
Nor whether your name is base or brave, 
Nor for the fashion of your behavior,— 
But whether you charm me,
Bid my bread feed, and my fire warm me,
And dress up nature in your favor.
One thing is forever good, 
That one thing is success,— 
Dear to the Eumenides,
And to all the heavenly brood. 
Who bides at home, nor looks abroad,
Carries the eagles, and masters the sword.

Tweak laws 
Stratify identity 
Threaten activists 
Silence dissent 
Round up the poets 
Punish opposition 
Blame the victims 
Appropriate their oppression 
Sing of your righteousness

Say it with the right accent 
So that it sounds acceptable

Do it in a suit and tie 
So that it looks professional

Kill them in the dead of night 
So that it seems accidental

Give the weeping mother a care package 
To appear sentimental

Tell us it was a mistake 
To fan the flames of an inferno

Hate with such ferocity 
That it could feel like love

I have been sprinting.

The proverbial shirt on my back is

Drenched. The very real lungs in my body

Are waiting to exhale. I want this. I know it.

I do not feel guilty anymore. I just practice

Waiting on nothing long enough to see my self leave.

There will be no apologies. This is all that I carry. This

Weight. This apple seed. This godsend. This

Holy multiplier. God calls me many things.

Tells me to believe. Tells me not to get

Too wrapped up but I am surrounded

By horizons that can't let go of me

Shining. And why should I stop now?

Who is making the rules in this country?

Who has broken the rules in this country

Here.
There will be no shame.
No apologizing.
No answering to names unclaimed.
No code-switching.
No dimming of light.
No shrinking down to just a color.

This is a culture.
This is about presence.
This is an ode to resilience.

This is recognition of both
Efforts to remove Black individuality,
And our ability to sustain such an exemplary survival,
Even in our triumphs uncelebrated.

Let it serve as no coincidence
That we find ourselves in the center of America.
If the Midwest be the Heartland,
Then we beat just as loud,
And as proud, as any.

This is beyond skin.
Beyond brown paper bags and one-drop rulings.
Beyond the politicizing of Black bodies or the loss thereof.

This is proof
That even when we rest in peace,
We rest not in silence.

This is an eternity’s worth of affirmations.
Is Nina Simone’s YGB in living color.
Is testament to the pieces of you
That have no words.
That need no color.

In celebration of who you are
And all of who you are.
Oh, this is about what keeps our souls intact.
This is Amplifying the Black Experience.

Once I drove a car to the fields past the town, ran out of gas.
I got out and walked. Thirty years later, still walking 
at the border of dusk
Because I cannot tell lies.

What little girls learn:
Be pretty, show cleavage once you have it.
Be polite, don’t argue for your own sake.
Smoke cigarettes in private.
It’s the softest way to kill yourself
without having to take responsibility for death.

Don’t complain about your father’s love
that goes too far, or your mother’s acquiescence. 
Learn to acquiesce yourself. 
Learn to kneel, open your voice
as collateral wreckage.

The car stalled and there was nothing for it, empty tank.
Just wait ’til someone came by, take my chances.
I am from this country.

It was a lean-to one could live in 
so long as it never rained. It was 

a grain of salt close up, looking 
like a crystal, growing from itself 

like an outcrop of land. It was a sail 
opened in a storm. A memory lost. 

A coin tossed at the wrong time, 
declaring heads or tails. It had the air 

of an aristocrat or the stench of a skunk. 
No matter who bred it, it couldn’t be fair. 

It wasn’t a buoy. It kept no one up. 
It had the metallic notice of a gong. 

It was a thoroughbred raced too soon, 
or a setting moon, or a button lost or 

undone. It only had one track and 
when it sped up it was sure to derail. 

It had a smile for a satellite 
or a smirk for a son. Everyone 

thought they recognized its face, 
but, one by one, they were wrong.

I am lining my memories up against the wall. 
They are begging me for reprieve. Here is the night 
I found you on the floor, folded 

like laundry. Here are the bloody towels, 
the smell of ammonia and rotting fruit. 
Once I was a wife. Now 

I am a wilderness. I am the grove 
of aspens. All that’s left of you 
are candle stubs and carpet stains. 

All your goodbyes have turned into horses. 
They are grazing peacefully. Your words 
are blades of grass, our last argument 

a pasture dotted with poppies. 
That night I watched you wash 
your bruised hands in the sink. Now, 

I see two fish diving into a stream. 
I am re-remembering the last time 
we spoke. I have turned it into a holiday, 

marked it on the calendar 
with an asterisk. A day to eat cake. 
A day to enter the cellar 

and retrieve the special vintage 
with its sweet notes of smoke and honey. 
Lush on the tongue. Easy to swallow. 

The song sparrows 
have returned from their long summer 
singing of loss. Three notes. 

One for the knife, one for the cut, 
one for all I have 
forgotten.

I was a hand grenade of a girl
vacuum packed into a dress
that bound my body
like a bandage staunching a wound.

My arms were cinched in tourniquets
of tulle, my throat choked in a rage
of lace. I’d hacked my hair into chaos,
kept it ragged and short, kept my fists

clenched in the fuselage of my lap. My eyes – 
two foxholes. No light escaped. My lips
stretched across my face like a trip wire.
The man with the camera said, you can do better.

Give me a smile. I set my mouth
into the look I’ve kept all these years.
That’s still me in the photo,
waiting to pull the pin.

Falling asleep with the wasp still
inside of this window.

One of us is hungry.
One of us has given up.

The first time I found my brother 
overdosed, he looked holy. A thing
not to be touched. Yellow halo of last 
night’s dinner. His skin, blanched blue
fresco: Patron Saint of Smack. A cop,
flustered, tugged up his shorts, plunged
a needle into a pale thigh. He hissed 
awake like a soda can. The paramedic 
spoke softly in his ear like a lover, 
asked him what color yellow and red 
make. What is the difference between 
a lake and a river? In the corner
I whittle that used syringe into
an instrument only I can play.

Plants only have two choices 
to grow or to decay 
as long as they grow more leaves 
than what decays 
they are still here 
growing to the light 
reaching up to the sun 
without any deterrent 
they thrive. 

We are here like plants  
and with every breath 
We are meant to grow and thrive. 

                                                 As long as there is light, 
                                                 we will let it shine. 
                                                 We were always meant to thrive. 

Birds have a song 
they sing and huddle in windows, branches, 
any doorway or echoing archway 
between stars and dawn 
seeking just a breeze to take flight 
to their future 
and as they fly, we breathe. 

I breathe, 
Therefore I am. 

                                                  As long as there is light, 
                                                  we will let it shine. 
                                                  We were always meant to thrive. 

Bread rises with a little warmth 
some of us even have a mother starter dough 
to yield endless loaves 
Some of us prefer rice
a little steam fattens dry seeds into many meals 
if we have bread, if we have rice 
we are meant to survive 
with bellies that can be full 
know the sun feeds us 

We grow more than enough to 
feed all the children. 

                                                   As long as there is light, 
                                                   we will let it shine. 
                                          We were always meant to thrive. 

Love is ever present when we share food 
Love is ever present when we see people pet a stranger’s dog 
Love is ever present when we sit together and listen to each other’s stories 
Love is ever present when we simply care. 

Little moments promise that love will not vanish. 
When love is ever present 
we do not need to be afraid 
because love, like light, welcomes us. 

Love lets us speak and be seen. 
We do not need to be silent. 

                                          As long as there is light, 
                                                   we will let it shine. 
                                   We were always meant to thrive. 

                                          As long as there is light, 
                                                   we will let it shine. 
                                   We were always meant to thrive. 

                                             As long as there is light, 
                                                   we will let it shine. 
                                   We were always meant to thrive. 

I bring my father his dream—
his daughter at last returned
presenting him the spoils
of absence—cash, gadgets,
a bottle of something
naughty but not-too-strong.

I bring him his legs
—sturdy, with brand new knees—
exchange them for the wheeled
chair I had sent years ago
when they finally failed
falling into a bowed “O”
under his weight.

I bring him back
the years of distance,
when our shared silence
made the ocean between us
impassable, our voices
lost to its crashing waves.
The days pour out our songs.

I bring him back our bear hugs,
playful tugs on his afro,
back scratches and laughter
that slaps both our knees. A mouth
hungry for whatever emerges
from his ever-bubbling pot.

I bring him his reflection
grinning though my face,
our matching squints and sighs.
I bring him back his name
unburied from my tongue—
Daddy, I say, I’m home.

To enjoy
fireworks
you would have
to have lived
a different kind
of life.

A is for antipsychotics, the only advertised long term solution

B for the beta blockers bought to slow the boom boom of a beating heart

C as in chronic: (of an illness) persisting for a longtime or constantly recurring, causing comorbidity, so they recommend cognitive behavioural therapy

D dials the DSM-5 handing out diagnosis after diagnosis, giving label to your distractibility and decreased need for sleep, so they recommend dialectical behavioral therapy where they teach you distress tolerance to dilute your delusions

E is ensure, the vanilla-flavored meal replacement drink for when you cannot eat during medication switches to the extended release formula

F is for your feelings, experienced at an alarming intensity in comparison to the average human, they tell you this is dangerous (they being doctors who don’t know your name if not reading it off of your file, they being doctors who diagnose and prescribe after ten minutes in a room with you) they tell you this can be fatal, which, honestly, sounds kind of fucking fun

G for the gatorade, one bottle in every room, two in the bathroom

H takes you to the hospital, high off hypomania, where you will check yourself in and admit you need the help. Here they will diagnose you with something we used to call, “hysteria”

I is for interpersonal effectiveness, the module in DBT that teaches you how to keep your friends despite your irritable instability

J is for “Just kidding!” after you’ve said too much, too quick

K is when you promise you will not kill yourself, without calling her first

L is the lithium, to stop the lows, to lighten the load

M represents MAD pride, a mass madness movement for mental health service users, and the aligned, advocating that individuals with mental illness should be, could be, proud to be MAD

N is for normal, you need badly to be so, and so you take the pills but all you are is numb and nauseous and still quite neurotic

O is overprescribed! Four years on 250 mg of lithium and four on 250 mg of seroquel, all before you can legally drink

P is for the panic disorder the psychiatrist diagnoses you with. It explains your paranoia (but not your promiscuity) you leave his office with a prescription for propranolol

Q is for the quetiapine you still can’t quit

R is racing thoughts and for the rate of suicide, running at 19% for everyone with this disorder

S is for side effects. You are so stupidly sedated but at least now you sleep off the sexual trauma and suspected schizophrenia

T is still triggered, despite every treatment

U is for unemployed, the long stretches where you are more ill than you are useful

V is for the vacant look in your eyes and the voices in your head

W is for the withdrawal, when you stop taking the wellbutrin

X is for xanax, which they’ll put you on for three months you don’t remember at 16

Y is for yoga, which actually, you practise daily. It helps, yet you still want to die

Z is for zyprexa, the drug you finally refuse to take

Icarus, he advised,
heed the warning: don’t fly
too near the sun or sea;
stay the path.

But I mistook the sky for an iris,
and entered at the northern horizon,
where map edges blister,
and the compass wasps.

I was dutiful but unwooed
by chisel and bench, contracts
scribbled in fig sap, or watching
Ariadne ungold time.

          What awe is there
in earthen labyrinths?

Wax molds itself sublime,
shapes wings each night.
Light refracts my name in
dialect only moths comprehend.

I belong elemental, where trees
chance to become constellations,
where the bar-headed goose flies
past with the heart of a clock and

Zeus is a silver kite tethered
to Olympus by harp strings
trembling an offering.

          Of bliss? To remember
the why of it all.

Bliss is a body absconding
warp speed toward
a dwarf star whispering,
Unsee the beheld.

My fall, well, yes,
those depths matter less.
What I learned by height—
that’s the story.

I text my yoga teacher: I think I need
to start medication. I meant

meditation, but the subconscious
knows best. I once wrote a whole poem

about the angel of penetration
rather than admit in my haste

I meant angle of penetration.
Either way, a virgin ascends.

I return a can of paint to the store
because I can’t manage any more

pain, I meant paint. I mean pain.
I keep going back for pain samples

I don’t need. I have gallons of different
shades stored in the basement. Enough

for a fresh coat every year. I don’t take
the medication. There’s nothing worse

than a dull coat of pain. I prefer it
bright and sharp.

^{Zion says, “The LORD has forsaken me, my Lord has forgotten me.” Can a 
woman forget her baby, or disown the child of her womb? Though she might 
forget, I never could forget you.—Isaiah 49:14–15} 

^{“What It’s Like to Lose Your Entire Memory.”—Cosmopolitan}

You don’t remember anything.
How I formed you in your mother’s womb;
nursed you; bathed you; taught you to talk;

led you to springs of water?
I sang your name before you were born.
I’m singing your name now.

You’re clueless as an infant.
When I tell you to shout for joy,
you hear a bicycle, or a cat.

Sometimes, memories of me come back
like children you forgot you had:
a garden; a bride; an image of  your mother,

a best friend, a brother, or a cop, or snow, or afternoon.
Whose are these? you wonder.
Then you forget, and feel forgotten,

like an infant who falls asleep
at the breast
and wakes up hungry again.

Your mother might forget you, child,
but I never forget.
Your name is engraved

on the palms of my hands.
I shower you with examples of my love—
bees and birds, librarians and life skills,

emotions, sunlight, compassion.
Nothing connects.
Every dawn, every generation,

I have to teach you again:
this is water; this is darkness;
this is a body

fitting your description;
that’s a crush;
this is an allergic reaction.

This is your anger.
This is mine.
This is me

reminding you to eat.
Turn off the stove.
Take your medication.

This is the realization
that I am yours and you are mine. This is you
forgetting.

^{translated from the Yiddish by Daniel Kraft}

I write a poem for my unwritten poems,
for those that lie still in the rigid rest of nothingness,
as in the rest of reason—unemerged ideas.

How good the word is that has not yet been pronounced,
growing to its maturity in beds of silence
like the corn kernel in the field. 
Tomorrow perhaps the sun will crawl out
from the wind-swept, snowed-in heights,
and the seed
and the word
will rise into the blossoming beauty
of visible being.
Tomorrow perhaps there will be pain in the renewed white heat
of spring’s ascent towards bloom.

How good the kernel is,
that hibernates through years’ becoming
in the peace of its own essence,
beneath the earth,
like the bear after months of sleep— 
waiting, expecting
to awaken.

^{translated from the Yiddish by Daniel Kraft}

Dear mother, dear mother, I saw you from afar today,
you stood with your siddur and prayed for all of us
across these distances, your prayer was borne across the seas,
and like Noah’s blue dove your prayer brought me a leaf …

I spread it on my heart and wrote my poem on it
of my solitude, of my sadness by dawn and night;
not much remains of my unlived life,
in the flood of people I am but a single tear …

I’d write and write, but probably you’d weep
if I told everything to you about my sorrow in these quiet nights.
Across the seas and distances, my poem comes to you.
It will kiss your old siddur, and weave itself into your prayer …

Ellis Island, November 1938
 

^{translated from the Yiddish by Daniel Kraft}

I am that portrait on the dusty wall
of somebody unknown, thinking a silent thought.
Often I am that brittle skeleton
in the anatomy book sitting on my shelf.

I am often my own shadow, that follows me 
and paints me on the walls in strange designs.
Often I am that unseen image
looming in a wild creature’s dream.

I am often that dead figure,
that plaster sculpture in the middle of the park.
Often I am entirely the charming 
caricature of a loser, a Jew.

I see myself in all places, naked. 
I am a part of everything and everything is in me.
In ruined castles I stand maimed, stripped bare,
I lie anonymous beneath destroyed gravestones.

I see myself in all places, naked. 
I am a part of everything and everything is in me.
In being—I am there. In nothingness—not gone.
Even outside of all that is, I am never beside myself.

^{an Abecedarian}

Allegiance to the flag is a start. A promise.
Begin there, says the teacher.
Come, and we’ll climb the Hill at sunup,
Daring, not disruptive. Dusk metes out mornings for
Everyone who makes room
For freedom to mold another day, a lump of soft clay.
Go places, let my guitar emulate Leonard Cohen’s
Hallelujah, we will rock Hendrix style. Let Lennon sing:
It’s so hard, to sing for America. Imagine!
Just once, can we figure how to rebel this—what
Karma will justify sedition to reclaim a lost election?
Liberty gasping between light & the dark. To
Man up takes bravery, says the teacher.
Now, now, how did we get here, asks a student.
O, tell us how, you self-
Possessed Patriots.
Quickness is not the order of time, said an elder.
Repeatedly we vowed persistence,
Stood reigning just like dawn & dusk, till
Truth, the goddess of life gonged.
Untethered you’ll arrest the truth, &
Vision too will wane if only a biased whim.
We are You—Us is America,
XY YX XXXY YXY, limitless
Yes! Proclaim: P for peace, E for earth, A for all.
Zero in on C for climate, E for equality. Our unity.

^{translated from the Korean by Younghill Kang}

Others would think of their loves.

My love I would forget.

One thinks and considers, to forget.

One thinks and looks, when it is scarcely forgotten.

When wanting to forget, it was thinking,

When thinking, it could not be forgotten.

If I should not think, nor not forget - let be, let be.

Not thinking, not forgetting - let be, let be.

But that too is impossible.

I think, I think of the beloved only, incessantly. What shall I do?

If my purpose were but to forget!

Forgetting is not an unheard of thing.

Only it would be death and sleeping.

Impossible, while there is the beloved.

Ah! ah! the forgetting - that is the more desolate!

나는 잊고저

남들은 님을 생각한다지만 
나는 님을 잊고자 하여요 
잊고자 할수록 생각히기로 
행여 잊힐가 하고 생각하여 보았습니다

잊으려면 생각히고 
생각하면 잊히지 아니하니 
잊지도 말고 생각도 말아 볼까요 
잊든지 생각든지 내버려두어 볼까요 
그러나 그리도 아니 되고 
끊임없는 생각 생각에 임뿐인데 어찌하여요

구태여 잊으려면 
잊을 수가 없는 것은 아니지만 
잠과 죽음뿐이기로 
임 두고는 못하여요

아아 잊히지 않는 생각보다 
잊고자 하는 그것이 더욱 괴롭습니다

A baby is singing in the morning  
before anyone is up in the house 

Before he has decided  
which of all the languages he will speak  
he is trying the sounds of his voice 
in the first light

He hears a man  
come up the street collecting bottles 
just ahead of the garbage truck 
straining uphill  
to come throw them away

He hears the shriek of glass  
It is like the vessels of Creation  
breaking in God’s hands

He hears the wind around the house 
and in the wind  
every word he will ever say  
and what will stay unsaid

and stops to listen to silence 
and sings to it 
the way the body addresses the soul 
lending it shape 
lending it comfort and sorrow

The body wants to be useful 
and the soul is open so wide

This is the way we awaken  
He remembers he is alone 
and cries for us.

^{for my mother}

           After the men had 
eaten, as always, very 
           fast, and gone—I thought

           of them that way, my 
father and brother—the men— 
           not counting myself

           as of their kind—the 
time became our own, for talks, 
           for confidences—

           I was one of her,
though I could never be, a 
           deserter in an

           open field between 
two camps. Even my high school 
           said on its billboard,

           Give us a boy, and 
get back a man, a wager 
           that allowed for no

           exceptions, like an 
article of war. Gay child 
           years away from that

           lonely evening of 
coming out to her at last, 
           of telling her what

           she knew already 
and had waited for, I’d sit 
           in the kitchen with

           her after clearing 
the meal away, our hands all 
           but touching, letting

           a little peace fall 
around us for the evening, 
           coffee steaming in

           two cups, and try at 
ways of being grown, with her 
           as witness, telling

           the truth as I could— 
which is how, one night, that room
            became a minor,

           historically 
unrecorded battleground 
           of the Vietnam

           War. I think she knew 
before it began how she’d 
           be left standing in

           the middle with her 
improvised white flag, mother, 
           peacemaker, when I

           said I refused to 
go; never mind how, I’d thought
           her very presence,

           her mysterious 
calm, would neutralize any 
           opposing force, draft

           board, father—it’s not,  
we know, how that war came to  
           pass. For years I’d still

           call her at that hour, 
the work done and the darkness
           coming on, even

           all those years when Dad 
was the one who’d come to the
           phone first, and then not

           speak to me. Twilight 
times with her, when a secret 
           or what I thought was

           one could fall away 
beneath her patient regard, 
           though I would never

           manage to heal her 
hurts the way she tended mine— 
           those crossings-over

           to evening when the 
in-between of every kind 
           seemed possible, and

           doubt came clear, because 
she heard, and understood, and 
           did not turn away.

     Every seventh year you shall practice remission of debts. 
                                    (Deuteronomy 15:1)

How simple it ought to be, to practice compassion 
on someone gone, even love him, long as he’s not 
right there in front of me, for I turned to address him, 
as I do, and saw that no one’s lived in that spot 
for quite some time. O turner-away of prayer—
not much of a God, but he was never meant to be. 
For the seventh time I light him a candle; an entire 
evening and morning it burns; not a light to see 
by, more a reminder of light, a remainder, in a glass 
with a prayer on the label and a bar code from the store. 
How can he go on? He can’t. Then let him pass away; 
he gave what light he could. What more 
will I claim, what debt of grace he doesn’t owe? 
If I forgive him, he is free to go.

^{translated from the Arabic by Ammiel Alcalay, Khaled al-Hilli, and Emna Zghal}

The war left me only those who died to call friends. I bless
night and light a votive candle so they pass through me in
a dream, like a scalpel or a cough, it left me no heart as a
window to hang on the wall of memories, no street for when
passion waves its kerchief and birds flee and songs groan
because it didn’t forget the coppery taste of bullets and the
deep scent of parting in the heart. It didn’t forget that a hand
scattering love like a news vendor on morning doorsteps now
collects their remains every night under the pillows, it arranges
them in family libraries next to old wishes and stale kisses.
To whom then should we recite The Opening? Whoever died
died, in their palm a basket of vegetables and the scent of
fruit, and in their pocket a bus ticket and a new recipe for
pizza! To whom then should we recite the Time, for no one
is left on the sidewalk of longing who didn’t get on the bus
but me and the morning rush, where war left us nothing
but the distance between the florist and the cemetery.


 

على من نقرأُ الوقتَ؟

لم تتركْ الحربُ لي غير الذينَ ماتوا أسميهُم الأصدقاءَ. أباركُ ليلاً وانذرُ
شمعاً كي يعبرونيَ، في حلمٍ كمبضعٍ أو سعالٍ، لم تتركْ ليَ القلبَ نافذةً
أعلقُها على حائطِ الذكرياتِ، ولا شارعاً كلما لوّحَ الوجدُ منديلَهُ هجّتْ
طيورٌ وأنَّت أغانٍ، فهي لم تنسَ بعدُ طعمَ الرصاصِ النحاسيِّ، ورائحةَ
الفراقِ العميقةَ في القلبِ. لمْ تنسَ أن يداً تنثرُ الحبَّ كبائعٍ للجرائدِ على
عتباتِ الصباحِ صارتْ تلمُّ اشلاءَهُم كلَ ليلةٍ تحتَ الوسائدِ، وتراصفَهُم
في مكتباتِ البيوتِ جوارَ الأماني القديمةِ والقبلِ اليابسةِ. على من
إذن نقرأُ الفاتحةَ! والذي ماتَ ماتَ، وفي كفِّهِ سلةُ الخضرواتِ ورائحةُ
الفاكهةِ، ماتَ وفي جيبِهِ تذكرةُ الباصِ ووصفةُ البيتزا الجديدةِ! على من
إذن نقرأُ الوقتَ، فلم يبقَ على رصيفِ الشوقِ لم يركبْ الحافلةَ سواي
وركضُ الصباحِ؛ حيث لم تترك لنا الحربُ غير المسافةِ بين بائعِ الوردِ
.والمقبرة

^{translated from the Arabic by Ammiel Alcalay, Khaled al-Hilli, and Emna Zghal}

1
The birds are scared to perch
when passing my heart — 
afraid they’d eat the bread of its sorrow,
and become, like it, a heart,
and die.

2
Shadow holds a memory of sadness
walls pass it on from home to home;
and when my shadow passes me by
I find myself crying out of nowhere!

3
Homes in war are eaten up by sorrow.
They talk to themselves,
restlessly making their way to the sea, alone,
and bury their heads in the crowds of the city.
In war, homes, like people, get injured by shelling,
and, like people . . . die of gangrene.

4
When I render unto Caesar . . . what is Caesar’s
and unto God . . . what is God’s — 
What’s left for me?

5
What a balcony and what a newspaper,
my laundry hanging from its sleeves
whipped by wind — 
will it break down quickly,
or resist . . . until the poem bleeds out?

6

The cypress dreamt the cloud was flirting,
and so longed for it.
It reached and reached,
but the passing cloud
was the stream’s lover,
and soil’s fate.

7
It came back to me . . . 
while the ambulance broke the sound barrier
and your wound trembled blood and screams,
that you — aside from the sight of blood — 
hate excessive speed.

8
— When you go to bed, leave a glass of water by your side.
— Why, mother . . . ?
— So your guardian angel can drink.

9
I dreamt you as a rose in my hand,
and waited the morning long . . . 
no knock at the door
no ring of the phone!
Even nighttime come to shut the window
had its spirit broken, content with the poem.

10
I was dead when there was a knock on the door
— who? said my image in the frame —
I said: it’s me . . . back to dust you off.

 

مقاطع قصيرة

١

الطيورُ تخافُ تحطُّ
;حين تَعبرُ قلبي
تَخافُ تأكلُ خبزَ أحزانِه
فتصيرُ قلباً مِثلَهُ
.وتموت

٢
للظلّ ذاكرةُ أسَى
تُمرّرُها الجدرانُ من بيتٍ لبيت؛
حتّى إذا ما مرّ بِي ظلّي
!أراني دونما أدري بكيت

٣
,البيوتُ في الحرب يأكلُهَا الحزنُ
,تكلّم نفسَها،
,تمشي إلى البحر من ضجرٍ وحيدة
وتعودُ تدفنُ رأسَها في زحامِ المدينة
,البيوتُ في الحرب يجرحُها القَصفُ
,وكالناسِ.. تموت بالغرغرينا

٤
حين أُعْطي لقيصرَ . . . ما لقيصر
وما للهِ . . . لله
ماذا تبقّى لي . . . ؟

٥
,يا لها من شرفةٍ وجريدة،
وغسيلي المعلّقُ من ساعديه
تجلِدُه الريحُ
,سينهار عاجلاً،
أم يحتمل . . . حتى نزيف القصيدة؟؟

٦
حَلَمَ السرو بأنّ الغيمَ يغازله
.فاشتاق إليه
وأطال أطال اليدَ
لكنّ الغيمَ العابرَ
,كان حبيبَ الجدول
.ونصيبَ الأرض

٧
..تذكّرتُ
وسيارةُ الإسعاف تخرِقُ حاجزَ الصوت،
وجرحُكَ يرتجُّ دماً وصراخاً
—أنّكَ — غير منظر الدماء  
.تكرهُ السرعةَ الفائقة

٨
 .حين تنام ضَعْ كوباً من الماء جانبك—
لمَ يا أم . . . ؟؟— 
.ليشربَ الملاكُ حارسُك— 

٩
,حلمتُ كأنّكَ وردةً في يدي
وفي الصبحِ طالَ انتظاري . . .
,فلا البابُ دقَّ
!ولا رنّ الهاتف
حتّى المساءُ الذي جاءَ يغلقُ النافذة؛
!كان منكسرَ البال، مكتفياً بالقصيدة

١٠
ميتاً كنت، حين دُقَ البابُ
منْ؟— 
.قالتْ صورتي في الإطار
.قلتُ: هذا أنا . . . عدتُ أمسحُ عنك الغبار

^{translated from the Arabic by Ammiel Alcalay, Khaled al-Hilli, and Emna Zghal}

I am the prophet who lost his prophecy. I put my book
on the sidewalk and sat on it. Everyday I dry the River of
Misdirection along the streets of town, and when I get back
home, I hang it on the Wall of Certainty and dream of a dead
country that smells of an old suitcase, of women made of
stone who hurl their breasts at me like shoes, and of black
flowers that come out of my flute to light up my nightmares
with sleeplessness. Die a little, O Speech, so I can sleep and
dream of the mute, walking like trees and chanting like wind.
Die a little, O Speech, so I can trade my tattered poems for
vacant stares and light clouds to cast them like a feather
into my heart. Die a little, and give me my first kiss: a star
to lean on and herd my pain with. I want the prophet
that I was. I want the prophet I betrayed.


 

نبيُّ الضلال

.أنا النبيُ الذي فقدَ نبوءَتَهُ، وضعتُ كتابي على الرصيفِ، وجلستُ عليهِ
كلَ يومٍ أنزهُ نهرَ الضلالِ في شوارعِ البلدةِ، وحينَ أعودُ إلى البيتِ أعلقُهُ
على حائطِ اليقينِ، فأحلمُ ببلادٍ ميْتَةٍ لها رائحةُ حقيبةٍ قديمةٍ، بنساءٍ
حجرياتٍ يرمينَ نهودَهُنَ عليَّ كأحذيةٍ، بزهورٍ سوداءَ تخرجُ من نايي
,لتضيءَ كوابيسي بالأرقِ. متْ قليلاً أيها الكلامُ لأنامَ وأحلمَ بأناسٍ بكمٍ
يمشون كشجرٍ ويهتفونَ كريحٍ. متْ قليلاً أيها الكلامُ كي أبدلَ قصائدي
الرثةَ بنظراتٍ ساهمةٍ وغيومٍ خفيفة، وأرشقها كريشةٍ في قلبي. متْ
قليلاً، وهاتِ قُبلَتي الأولى؛ نجمةً أتوكأُ عليها وأهشُ بها على ألمي. أريدُ
.النبيَّ الذي كُنتُهُ، أريدُ النبيَّ الذي خُنتُهُ

This isn’t the end. It simply
cannot be the end. It is a road.
You go ahead coatless, light-
soaked, more rutilant than
the road. The soles of your shoes
sparkle. You walk softly
as you move further inside
your subject. It is a living 
season. The trees are anxious
to be included. The car with fins
beams through countless
oncoming points of rage and need.
The sloughed-off cells
under our bed form little hills
of dead matter. If the most sidereal
drink is pain, the most soothing
clock is music. A poetry
of shine could come of this.
It will be predominately 
green. You will be allowed 
to color in as much as you want
for green is good
for the teeth and the eyes.

This green fills with gray, a kind of light
            that’s hard to breathe if
            you’ve had enough of this
            day, this moment, this life
            which is exactly the problem.
We reach towards a color as if
            it might be something,
            something more
            like being with someone,
            what we call an embrace,
            perhaps, but perhaps not,
            perhaps a trap, a noose.
Sometimes, though, it will be,
            this light resembling gray,
            not what we thought at all
            but something else entirely
            and, quite probably, worse.

I survived. That’s all there is to say 
about the trampling. A forest or

some grand ecosystem of 
machetes hidden in cheeks.

What a mouth. The beast of the beast. 
Everything I am can kill me

or give another reason to operate 
from uneducated fear. I’m from

where love is. Bones don’t weigh a death. 
I need to have a word with all the gods

that failed me. They wear masks and 
vernacular like those whose caskets I’ve prayed next to.

They feed me pitted pomegranates full of smoke. There are 
no angels. Just good people and the memories they become.

Press your wrists to your ears. Slow the world down. 
Leave hope and learn your song. All I have are

my lungs to breathe, my mouth to speak, my legs to 
proceed and my arms to make my enemies fall.

All enemies I’ve been, fall, now. I will not hurt myself but 
I will save myself even if it hurts. My body is learning

to heal and runs on tactical forgiveness. The ones who 
lied to me, about me, on me have been forgiven

how the wind forgives the large blade swung through it. 
How the blade forgives itself for being mishandled and

chooses only to understand those who need weapons 
to feel bigger than their own body. An overwhelming

space. I burn and there is no smoke. I excavate, 
I’m wrestling skeletons out of my mouth.

I’m catching up with who I want to be. 
I’m saying day after day, I live

the harder it will be to kill me.

Tell me the veins under my skin
are safe inside your casket. 
Caoba and negra lora are my favorite trees, 
but you can bury me under a flamboyán. 
I will still burn inside, impossible to extinguish.

Tell me you will share my stories
with the little ones who pull flowers,
running to give them to their mothers, grandmothers;
the ones who hold the ancestral passage.

They still remember me. 
My name will come off their tongue
only to crawl into the mouths of those who cannot pronounce 
the names carved unto my crucifix.

Tell me that to be here, with you, meant something,
when you said you loved me, you meant it.
In another life, you did not rip away even the hairs from my arms.
Instead, you took soil & carried the lashes on my eyes to water.
The moon fed me, we made love & 
I blessed you before we created our home.

If my body is dying, tell me you love me.
Tell me the ones inside me are safe, bellies full, 
cement walls stable enough to cover them.

Don’t tell me about the excavators & bulldozers that wait, 
like vultures, to ruin me.
Don’t tell me about the contracts you’ve made,
how the people are waiting to build their homes over my bones.
Tell me about the love you had for my body,
how you promised to sustain me.

I can’t imagine a world where I am not here, with you. 
What will I look like once you’ve failed? 
Fight with me here, my love, while I am still alive.

I followed here the heart  
I built for you. Here it is, blue 

as the preening peacock’s crest, bruise  
renewed again and again. Blue as

children made vapor, families ground 
to grist raining on the accordion 

chest of the sea. I followed here my own  
forgetting of the fireflies that blink 

like prayers in belligerent grasses; my 
dreams of mattering, as in, appearing—

a noun in your syntax. That stone  
you strike for water. Is this not

the Dream? To take more than  
bodies have to give, then eat without

discord? I want you to know I have 
always understood my place. That 

the only feeling more beautiful than  
your fear is your want. Look, 

how your flowers light the world.

^{translated from the Danish by Sophia Hersi Smith and Jennifer Russell}

There lives a young girl in me who will not die,
she is no longer me, and I no longer her,
but she stares back when I look in the mirror,
searching for something she hopes to recover.

There is no one else in the world she can ask:
Where are the earnest smiles, the carefree dances?
Where are my dreams and the joy of twenty?
Tell me, have you made the most of my chances?

I try to catch that pale, shimmering gaze,
try to silence her questioning refrain,
and in the depths of my heart I hear a regret,
softly dripping like the sound of rain.

‘Your dreams were flimsy, child, and doomed to fail,
your innocence ruined by the truth you were told –
your budding hopes fell to the ground
the night reality invaded your soul.

‘You had a girl’s dream of a husband and baby,
and you got what you wanted but were still alone,
so you remained in childhood’s wondrous land,
while I am left roaming a world of stone.

‘It is by your sheer strength you have not died,
but live on somewhere as a faint likeness,
though I have sold your dreams for a roof and bread
and brought you pain I mistook for happiness.

‘And my only salvation is feeling your voice
as a surge in my heart’s languid beat –
you are my defence, my unrest and deepest comfort,
constant and true through time’s fickle retreat.’

There lives a young girl in me who cannot die
until I tire of believing I once was her.
She stares back when I look in the mirror,
searching for something she longs to recover.

^{translated from the Danish by Jennifer Russell and Sophia Hersi Smith}

On my childhood street
lives an old woman
who remembers me
as a little girl.
I was unruly
she says
the whole building shook
when I bounded down
the stairs from the fourth floor.

This picture of me
inserts itself
and distorts
like when
a photograph is taken
on top of another.

I fear the place
I hold in other people’s
memory. They remind me
of things I have forgotten.

They stole
my face
before it was
worn out
and wear it often
on top of their own.

I don’t remember
the old woman
from my childhood
the grown-ups were all the same
and ageless.
She knows something
about me she won’t divulge
a secret I’ve never told.

It fills her up
and keeps death at bay
she tells lies and intends
to outlive me.
I never took the stairs in bounds
I was a quiet child.
I hate her.