Songs of a Refugee
Do you hear me, child with paper wings,
who slept in the crib of my arms?
I am alone on the edge of the world.Your voice burns among stars,
and I have dreamt I saw your face,
framed by tender leaves, on an ancient coin.Perhaps one day a stranger will find you, saying:
Here is your father's name, which you have forgotten;
these ashes were the paper it was written on.
Brother
do you remember
as boys in winter
we'd climb the almond trees,
the sky above us blue as fire.Brother
I am far from you.Days come and go.
I close my eyes.Some day I'll have lived
long ago, somewhere
a low heap of ashes,
and you'll remember me.
Mother
you are bleeding,
father you are crying still.Come,
my sweet ones,
into my body.I have heard your approach,
in the darkness
I have waited for you.Father do not die
in my arms
again.Mother
give me
your living hand.I am a bird,
I am a branch moaning,
I am a seed splitting.Beneath
the frosts of my eyes
there are flames.
God, there was
a child's face,
a cracked plate;
soft words spoken in a book;
and a first kiss, long, long ago.These things I remember.
These things lost completely.God,
I no longer remember you.
Once my village
moved inside me;
when someone stirred, dreaming
a house away, I felt that weight
like a deep tide slowly rising.Tonight
a dead man's carried through the streets;
a stone is falling down the well;
a woman holds a sleepless child,
as she did a thousand years ago.Only I
am not there.
I remember you
my love,
beside me
like the deepest water,
or the reed, bending.I have looked
into every wind
for you,
I have called
into every stone.The moths and the b irds and the clouds
burn all night.
I sleep
under a sheet of cinders;
I wake but my eyes
will not open.We have lived.
We have not lived.
Tell me, where
am I buried?Tell me where
my absence reigns,tell me
what silence I am.
