Nuclear Arms

"... as he went to join the nuclear
arms protest in Amsterdam in 1981"
I read, and was momentarily stuck
in the image of two strong, unhesitant

arms, with subatomic powers of enfolding
all my protons, waltzing with my electrons,
and electrifying all my neutrons; arms
gifted with the force of fusion, gathering

all my elementary particles,
keeping them from speeding away
in opposite directions, anchoring
them in a here. Arms that could

annihilate my entire population,
in a blink, on a whim, if they would.


(written during the longest night of the year, as the full Moon enters a total eclipse, and the winter starts: Dec 21, 3:14 AM)

Of Winds and Antelopes

"In the silence, the flag flapping, the rope hitting the mast, were more mournful than any music" (Harry Mulisch, The Assault).

(For Marijana)


The saddest sound I ever heard was the wind in a bottle.
It happened one muffled afternoon full of restless clouds,
While we stood, two figures pinned down by the casual sky,
On top of the hill, turning north south east and west
Among the freshly dug graves, glittering in the pale June sun,
Above the city.

We carried gallons of water in plastic Pepsi bottles
From the far fountain (the one in our sector had run dry)
To keep the flowers fresh, turning the earth around our mound to mud.
Then we settled under the willow-tree on her left,
And looked down the hill to the lower levels of the site
Where a woman in black swept around her mound with a small broom.

Beyond, bulldozers opened new lots, pushing the edges,
And beyond them, purple hills ran down to the river,
Rolling now then and forever, slow and unsurprised.
And it was then that the north wind which came with the river
Slipped into our plastic bottles and started to sing low,
So low that it seemed to be sinking underground,

A long, low sound sadder than anything said or unsaid.

I looked to where we had lit the candles behind her cross
(It's never easy to keep them burning on top of that hill)
And saw a small wonder: the yellow wax melting
Into an antelope running quickly, faster than the wind,
Lighter than the beginning or the end of light.

Lady Lazarus

In the rush-hour bustle
of the metro, she held
a white bunny, gingerly
pressed against her chest,
its pink nose quivering
softly into her black
leather jacket. No one
seemed to notice or care,
her coy smile and the bunny's
blatant whiteness lost
in the post-work haze.

Imagine pulling
the security brake,
and yelling, along with the
clanging of the alarm,
and telling them all
(Lady Lazarus of
the Metro) to look,
just look, and they would see

a small huddled miracle,
a touch of magic
straight from the black hat,
visiting for a second,
gone at the next station.

In*spiration

Inside, something snapped,
splintered. A long asystole,
a mid-breath arrest, and
a shock of nothingness - then
a dazzling moment of
syncopated truth.

I finally passed you by
and walked on without
turning, my glance
relaxing into other
lives, my rigor mortis
melting in the sun.

An inspiration
opening the lungs,
injecting the eye with
the trace of a clue,
shifted minutely
and inimitably

the birds, the trees, the sky.
All just mine, all new.

In Absentia

Today would be your 69th birthday.
You missed the last four of them
And you will miss all the rest of them.
You went before you got old:
A good thing, perhaps -- you
Always feared the unkindness
Of age.

What could I tell you about
The time that has passed
Without you? The usual
Succession of suns and rains,
The unsurprise of hurt and balm,
The triviality of a minor
Chord change.

You missed so little and
So much. I grew, without you.
Other people witness
What I am becoming;
I smile for others, and tell them
Words I would have kept
For you.

I would have loved to have
You a little longer.
I could have shown you an
Older me; I could have loved you
From the depth of four bonus years.
I could have been what you always
Were for me.

Instead, I am here,
On this page, feeling your
Absence and conjuring
Your presence. My smile
Is yours, and my words
The ones you taught me.
Happy birthday,

From the one you held
Close as long as you could.

This was Me

За Тамару, која почиње

ТРАГАЊЕ

Открићу ти једну тајну:
Одувек о теби снивам.
У чаробне нити танке
Мојих снова расплетених
Заплићеш се врло вешто
И тајне ми шаљеш знаке.

С тобом ловим Млади Месец
Кроз поноћне шумске крике;
С тобом пратим Јужни Ветар
И гусарска тражим блага;
С тобом јурим Добре Виле
Вештице и Чаробњаке.

Срећем те на сваком углу
Зачараног лавиринта;
Видим те у сваком перу
Жар-птициног златног крила;
Сваки нови светионик
Управља ка теби зраке.

Да ти певам ову песму
Ни на јави нећу стати;
Једино још увек не знам:
Хоћу ли те препознати?

(1993)

Approximation:

For Tamara, who is beginning

THE SEARCH

Do you want to know a secret? -
I have always dreamt about you.
You have knit yourself with magic
Into unfurled threads of my dreams
Where you sit and smile and whisper
Sending me your secret signals.

You go with me on the Moon hunt
Through the echoes of black forests;
You go with me and the South Wind
In the search of pirate treasures;
You go with me on the wild chase
After Fairies, Hags, and Wizards.

You are there at every corner
Of the spellbound maze and riddle;
I can see you in each feather
Of the golden-wingèd flame-bird;
Every lighthouse sends its searchlight
Without fail in your direction.

I won't cease to sing you this song
Even in the waking hours,
But I wonder: will I ever
Know your face among the others?

(1993)

Auto-recycling

"... when the human engine waits/ Like a taxi throbbing waiting"
(T.S. Eliot)


The motor was stalling,
dying, beyond repair.
It was a good motor
but it had had its run;
it ran for decades but
couldn't remember
any more what got it
started. What did it
run on? Or for?

The hiatus after the final
halt was only seconds
(centuries) long; then,
a pair of strong legs -
fit, sinewy, ready -
hit the ground, and
started. Stepping
confidently, (from the
heel, to the ball of the

foot, to the toes) in a
straight line, with an
elastic bounce, they
take on the rhythm
of a new drive, self-
combusting into the
zest of a new personal
velocity, overtaking
old landmarks, cruising

the city with ease
and suaveness, generated
by a brand-new
well-oiled
self-ignited
motor.

Distortions of Renaissance Pragmatism

The world must be peopled,
Says Benedick (to himself)
Before Beatrice enters
(Act II, Scene iii).

And so I do -- without much
ado. Except, I don't
people it with people,
really. A friend called it

Slavic animism once
(it was the summer of
bare feet, long words
and short nights).

What it is, actually,
is an exercise in
exploding loneliness
into a population of animas,

protective and personalized,
sending signals and
reasserting the rightness
of this moment in this

your life, reflecting
your defragmented
you, showing it
in the light.

A comforting mirage
of external meaning
revealed in the
quotidian to the observant --


this is certainly
not what Benedick
had in mind when he
set to people the world


with Beatrice. Too
metaphysical, that.
And, ultimately,
profoundly lonely.

Black Sandals

If my mother had been Asian
She would have probably looked
Like the woman on the metro
A few weeks ago.
It was something in her
Wide temples, it was
Her short black hair,
Her small, clever hands, and
The intelligent fingers
With modestly long
Fingernails, but most of all,


It was the straps of her
Black sandals around her
Dainty pale-skin ankles
Set off nicely by medium-
High heels that spelled
My mother silently
From the floor of the
Metro car.

Kelebia-Kelebija: Entering the Country from the North

10 million years ago
this was all underwater,
this stretch of fields
was home to
fishes, shells and crabs
not dreaming of trains
carrying dreamers glued
to windows across the oceans
of wheat.


this drained sea-bottom
is endlessly the same
north and south
east and west,
gives me nothing
to go by, doesn't
translate into borders
or countries or allegiances,
it teases, rightfully,


until, a few hundred meters
down the railway line from
kelebia, two words sprayed
on the wall of a crumbling
railroad house sail slowly
in and out of my view,
fitting easily into the
landscape of stray poppies
as we dock into kelebija:


VOLIM TE.
and then i know
exactly where i am
and what i am doing.
like a fish in the water.

Breathing in a Dark Room

Wait for it
thoughtlessly
unpreemptively
just an honest
wait
arms open wide
for the right time
even if it feels
late.

Just wait
(that’s what you’re
trained to do),
in the gathering
night
let the void
find you
enfold you
claim you.

Wait
(not out of tiredness
or cluelessness),
choose to unwind
the impetus, implode
the surface cumulus
into a perfect
nothingness,
only yours,

(Like floating
in water, face
up,
like breathing
in a dark
room,
like hearing
the world
disappear),

Wait.

Botched Heritage

botch (v.) [from ME bocchen, to mend] = to foul up, to bungle, to put together in a makeshift way



The day I woke up to find a hole
In my thick blue cardigan,
I knew I was in trouble.

My fingers are short and stocky
(Like my father’s; I have his knees too):
They are clever at blind-typing
But stall at pedestrian tasks.
So when I fetched my sewing needle
(The only one I own, slightly bent)
And the spool of thinned-out black thread
(Which I’ve had for decades, possibly),
I stepped into an unknown zone,
Pitifully incompetent.

Like a diver in a helmet,
Trudging heavy on dry land,
I was stumbling with each stitch,
I was losing thread and mission
In the narrow needle’s eye.
And all the while I knew, I felt
That this was a betrayal
Of my grandmother’s fingers,
Dancing delicately, playfully
For years, for decades, in pairs and patterns.

All the hours and patience and
Tenderness she sewed into it,
The Princess of Crocheting,
(Dreaming of children’s children perhaps),
All the cleverness she trained
In her fingertips, and willed
To the next batch -- evolved
(In the new millennium)
Into this earnest, but clumsy,
Botching of heritage.

Species Vulnerabilis

We walk around wearing
our vulnerabilities,
blinking in shyness
with eyes averted
carefully, from insecurities
of others, too much like ours.

Harelips, club feet, lazy eyes,
birthmarks, pockmarks, dumbo ears,
thick skin, thin skin, wrinkled skin,
voices, murmurs, memories,
words unsaid, and words outsaid –
a collection of wounds

we wrap around us and
carry, paradoxically,
like a protective shield,
a comforter, a motherly
armour, lulling us to our
baby sleep, hoping that those

we meet along the way won’t
shake us awake too rudely.

Choking on a Cherry

While you were choking on a cherry,
In the middle of a dappled country road,
I was twelve, and terrified
And stood at a distance, like
A block of stone, watching
The woman we were visiting
Pound your bent back with urgency.

(Grandmother told me how one summer
You almost choked on a teaspoonful
Of honey trickling slowly down your
Baby throat, and all she could do was
Watch)

When the cherry was propelled out
And you breathed back into life,
I too was catapulted from the
Dark nether regions of possible
Childhood tragedies into a fairly
Standard untraumatized adolescence,
Ushered in by a breath of relief –

Relief which, in retrospect, was only
Stalling for time, and blew up into
Smithereens, dispersed forever
When, twenty years later, I received
The news of your death, final
And irreversible, holding no
Hidden last-minute reprieves.

Winter Nocturno

3:30 a.m. and no moon
In sight. The windows in the alley
Gape unresponsive, the stiletto-roofs
Cut into the night-gray sky.


At 3:30 a.m. the back yard
Is massive. Under the expanse
Of white, it is a stage poised for
The next act, virgin-crisp under the lights.


Is this it? This patch of moonless
Sky, this plot of frozen ground,
These paper clouds, these dreaming
People whose names I don't know --


Is this it? Where my show will
Play out? Is it, at this random hour,
Already playing out? Is it, from out
There, looking back at me,


Wondering the same things? Well,
We are at least awake here together:
It must be a good sign; it must mean
I should now learn my lines.

The Girl with the Short Hair

(Za Gordanu)


She is back,
The girl with the short hair.
She doesn’t say where she has been
Or how long she is staying,
She only waves and beckons
From across the street,
Points at her open sandals
And summer tan,
Laughs with her
Forest-honey eyes.

Her hand plays with
The bristle of her hair
Uncovered by hat,
Her long bare arms,
Like half-moons,
In a magic swish
Pull a screen of indigo
Across the sky
Sprinkling a winking
Star or two.
She whistles of far-away places,
And squints to spot
The fanned-out horizons
Through lowered lashes,
Trailing behind her
Gurgly children, brass bands,
And cat gangs,
Ignoring the ringing phones
In empty booths
Along the way.

“It’s me,”
(She doesn’t have to say,)
“Where have you been?”
And suddenly the surprise
Of my own absence
Unfurls like a scarf of grief,
And I have no answer
But open my arms
And “I am back,”
(I don’t have to say).

The Princess and the Clown

(For David)

She asked me for a red-nosed clown --
I turned my pockets and I found:
A few holes, a few crumbs, and
A vast emptiness.


My words had fled without a trace,
Her outstretched hand demanded
Grace, and so we stood without
A sound, in awkwardness.



I could not tell her I was
The same: a little girl with stars
In her eyes, and the world at her
Feet, my father's princess.



No tricks up my sleeve, and a long
Way to go, I left her there sad and
Small, and went (hoping to return)
In search of readiness.

Decontextualized in 2009

at 12:10 p.m. the WC stall is blue, a look down at the corner hinges holding the walls together, and a big-lettered, blue-markered LOVE sprawling on the metallic rectangle

the exhaust fumes settle low at the red light, a glance to the right, and a rolled-down car window, with a male arm bent in the elbow, with a grey teddy-bear wedged above the wheel

a jam in the bike lane, waiting for pedestrians to cross, a whir of the bike halting to the left, a quick glance down, and a suave gecko curving around a delicate female ankle bone

a sustained whizzing of the wind, running wild on a downhill slope, caught in the interstice between helmet, ear, and earring

jeanne-mance & milton, an unexpected friend pasted in yellow rubber onto the asphalt, sending encrypted messages throughout the city, squarely, connecting everything to everything

Amputating a Wooden Leg*

I told them,
I tried to reason with them
I said look
I've had it for years,
This leg,
It's made of
Cedar
(The best wood),
It's not my
Flesh and blood
And it doesn't rot,
We've hobbled together,
Gingerly,
For a lifetime.



They wouldn't listen.
In their white coats
And thick glasses,
Like white googly-eyed
Birds
Gathered above me,
They fluttered
And flapped,
Consulted
And whispered,
Pinched
And squeezed,
Knocked and wondered
At the lack of reflex.



No one heard
My cries of protest
When they diagnosed
My wooden leg
With gangrene
And prescribed
Immediate amputation.
They asked
If I could please
Be still,
It won't take a moment,
And not to worry,
Modern technology
Offers splendid
Artificial limbs.



* A salute to Kazuo Ishiguro

Hello Goodbye Summer

GREETING

In April
the DQ on the corner
opens its shutters,
anticipates the summer.

In the small
parking lot a couple
sit inside their car
in winter jackets,
eating ice-cream,

dreaming of summer.

FAREWELL

In the late August evening
I'm cycling home,
picking lonesome
side streets
smelling of warm
breeze, conjuring
the scents of other
summers.

The overpass
tall grasses
are on fire with
crickets singing, yelling,
and my blue summer dress
fluttering, flapping
under the rotating
constellations.


Near Jean-Talon
I whir by a couple -
she's Italian,
we talked once -
walking their ferret,
looking and smiling
behind me
and


By the next block
it's somehow clear:
this is the night
the summer ends,
takes one last
curtain call,
doesn't turn back,
leaves us

dreaming into winter.

All the Things We Aren't Meant to Do

The title is misleading.
I have no clue what we are
Or what we aren’t
Meant to do.

Bringing an alpaca
To a pub,
Driving a cow
In a car,
Ironing happily
Underwater,
Smashing caravans
On a race track,
Or recreating
The Obama inauguration
In Lego –
Perhaps it
Makes sense,
After all.

But when the other day
I swapped Montreal for
Havana, and in three hours
Flew out of icy deserts
Into spicy suns,
Tricking light angles
And planetary revolutions,
Sneering at the stately pace
Of time –

I knew I was an intruder,
A criminal,
A trespasser,
On the unleased territory
Which was never really
Part of the deal,
But was snatched through
Collective curiosity and
Impatience appeal.

So there I was,
Sitting on the plane,
Having no clue,
Doing something that
Probably the prophets
Huddled around that
First fire
Never thought
We would do.


*See
http://news.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/hi/newsbeat/newsid_7846000/7846145.stm

How Small

In the Adirondacks (New York State),
from Canada,
listening to the Brazilian
Caetano Veloso
singing Paloma
in Spanish,
reading Mesa Selimović's
story about WWII
on the Bosnian mountain
Majevica,
I felt like crying,
not from sadness.

Immune

Suppose one day the sun rose in the West,
And starlings in Rome lost their compasses
And smashed into each other, falling
In heavy showers from a darkening
Morning sky?

Or they kicked my door open and took me
Barefoot and handcuffed, proclaimed guilty of
Remembering too much and too often,
Craning my neck to see you wave goodbye
In vain?

Or I woke up into a purple dream
Devoid of staple monsters but full of
Forgetfulness, growing from pots like flowers
And I lost your face, line by line until
I was blind?

I’ll sing you to me, you say, simply
And disperse into a thousand notes,
Leaving me poised to listen, forever
For wisps of melody you left behind,
Immune to all

Ends of the world.

Restoration

I am a reconstructor,
repairer,
restorer.

After the rain in the afternoons
I walk along wet streets
and collect drowned patches of the sky
from the puddles,
string them on a magic thread,
fan them out to dry in the wind.

In the cricket drone of a summer long dead
I build my childhood house
(now somebody else’s home),
lay a long, white-clad table
for all the family, headed by
great-grandfather Tanasije
who never came back
from the First War.

In the slanting sun of the late afternoon,
I close my eyes and record:
the corner of a smile,
the angle of a look,
the light in a voice,
the tickle of a touch,
the whiff of a melody,
the shade of a moment –
wrap them in bubble paper,
and carefully store them
in my little red box.

When they are gone
and forgotten,
when no one is left
to re-member,
I sit under the bright sun
in my patched-up sky,
open the little red box,
and unwrap my trinkets,
turn them about in the light,
dust them,
stitch them up,
and piece them together.

Then we sit in the sun
around the white-clad table
under the sewn-up sky,
and everything looks new
and old at the same time,
and everything is exactly
as I remember,
and more.

I am a reconstructor,
repairer,
restorer.

Procession at Berri-Uqam

A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,
I had not thought death had undone so many.


8 am in the metro.
The washed-out, shrunk-in
Faces, caving into their
Yawns, like lost souls
With glazed-over eyes
Spill out of the train
And with a look of borrowed
Purpose, march off in a
Phalanx of feet in their boots.

His palm on the pane of the
Departing train, a small Asian boy
Stares emptily ahead.

Whose dream is this and
Do we see each other?
Why are we so keen on
Walking the same way?
Does anybody know
Where we are going?

The Picnic in the Laurentians

Nobody knew where he came from.
With long wings the colour of earth
And thin unwieldy body,
He crashed Louis' birthday party
On the edge of a lake
In the heart of the Laurentians:
A giant night butterfly,
In solitude seeking our company.


The whole afternoon,
The forest rang with our laughter
(Urbanites unleashed en plein air),
The water absorbed the shrieks
Of the kids paddling their
Green plastic boat
(Sunburned savages eager to play),
The bushes and leaves breathed in
The smoke of our fire with chunks of
Meat and marshmallows inside
(Traditional
North-American picnic fare).


Now we were gazing at the intruder
Wondering how he lost his way,
And welcomed him to what we thought
Was our turf. It was all ours,
And he was our guest, silently
Partaking of our celebration,
Gratefully taking the crumbs
From our feast.


He was from there
But it was all ours,
And he never put in a word
Of complaint. Not even when
Soon he was forgotten,
Sadly misplaced among the plates,
With crumpled tissues and half-eaten
Cake.

Les Empreintes*

La porte qu’on trouve ouverte
Par quelqu’un,
La route qu’on suit après
Les autres

Le fruit qui montre des dents
Inconnues,
Le paysage qu’on voit quand
On est seul

La voix qui résonne après
Une chanson,
L’image qu’on sent lorsqu’on
Ferme les yeux

L’hôpital où on se promène
Avec les morts,
La présence qui est née
D’une absence.



*Merci à Jacques Prévert

Last Night an Airbag Saved My Life

Last night an airbag
Saved my life
On 401
We danced and
Spun round
Slowly
In this passenger seat
Waltz
It held me close and
Planted a kiss
Of urgency
On my forehead and eyelid
(Where small
Purple flowers
Would soon blossom,
A reminder of the
Eternal Footman’s
Gallant bow).

And all the while I thought
In circles, endlessly
Of the harsh words I told you
Before I left.

Non Sequitur

~Dedicated to all the churches, mosques, and bridges which we didn’t know how to keep~


If I could wake up
And be seventeen in Banja Luka
Again,
This is what I would do.

I’d walk slowly
Along my regular route
Down tree-lined streets
(It would have to be spring)
Stretching between
Home and school;
I’d pass the main square
And the city park,
Turn left in front of the bank
Where my brother and me
Emptied our piggy banks
Lifetimes ago,
Zigzag through some dusty backyards
Where one icy winter morning
I suddenly knew what it means
To die of cold,
And enter the gates of my
High school, the best in town.

Not fearing the bell,
I’d ignore the crushes
And rushes, and
Hairstyles, and fashions
And proceed to walk
Around the building;
Passing the smokers’ corner
I’d cross in an unswerving line
The exercise field
Nobody every used,
And reaching the edge of
The school grounds
I’d approach the small mosque
Perching on that plot
For the past four hundred years.

I’d examine the fountain,
Look round the court yard,
Take off my shoes
And step inside,
Not knowing that
Four years later, this handful
Of history will be bulldozered
By war,
And certainly not suspecting
That further down the line
I’ll feel this vast sadness
For never even giving it
A second glance.

Tendrils

Soft underwater brush
Against the foreign body
At the edge of the pool,
Breezy graze against the knee
Of a bike’s wheel
On the metro,
One eye in the sheets and
Kitty cushion-paws
Against the morning
Cheek,
Index finger offered
As a companion
At a cross-walk,
My mother’s palm
Kissing
My forehead:

Spring tendrils
Pushing timidly,
Irresistibly,
Through the soil
Of winter sleep,
With their long
Dainty fingers
Touching,
Caressing,
Holding on,
Keeping the world
In place.

Instead of a Journal Entry

At the feet of the dying day
I follow the rhythm of the slowing street,
Make the swishing leaves the soundtrack
To crisp autumn thoughts.
In front of an elegant house, a well-dressed
Woman confidently closes the trunk
Of the sleek car and, looking busy,
Rushes into the rest of her life.
I look as she enters her home
With the step of the owner
And am glad not to be her.

Above, a tiny plane leaves a trail
In the darkening face of light –
A quick glance at my watch:
Five to six.
A smile spreads across my face
Like the wings of the plane
Tilting above the hushed world
At the end of another day.

A Simple Prayer

If in the dead of a sleepless night
I began to slip and I was alone,
I’d welcome the darkness and say a slow payer,
Asking for –

The art of waiting for spring
At the beginning of winter,
The skill to lengthen the day
By forgetting anger,
The talent to take the time
To listen for one perfect note,
And the wisdom to stand still
When everyone’s running.

But above all, I’d ask for
The courage of knowing
That the planet will keep spinning,
That the heart will keep pumping,
That you will still want me,
After today.

Metamorphosis

A string of kisses
Breathes life into my
Neck, and suddenly
It is a slender forest animal
Curving, swaying, pulsating
Gracefully, under your lips.

The Touch

Michelangelo knew
How it all started
The hands suspended
A fraction before
The fingertips met
The space in between
Pregnant with
A world waiting to burst
And then…
morning sunshine filtered through the closing lashes; wet embrace of the splashing waves; minty snowflakes melting on the steaming tongue; feather-light lady bug strolling round the palm; wounded fingertips sliding down the guitar strings; perfect hands like birds fluttering around the cello; strand of hair slowly blown across the forehead by a breeze; delicate earring swaying slightly against the ear-shell; cascade of piano keys like the waltz of fingers on the skin; the feel of muscles, taught and pulsating; tender tracing of the curves, electric surface next to surface; ripples of current against the body under water; sunmagma spilling through the treetops; murmuring of birch leaves in the wind; tall summer grasses caressing the face; naked foot kissing the round pebbles; moist footprint in the hot sand; salty teardrop journeying down the vastness of the face; explosion of honey-sweetness on the taste buds; luxuriant smell of coffee on a Sunday morning; glossy smoothness of wild chestnuts lying on the ground; roughness of tree bark underneath fingers; softness of billowing clouds in the blue bowl above; weightless bones of a body sweeping through the air on a swing; acoustic resonance of a crystal voice; shrill note sustained in the ether; hot breath on the side of the neck; whispering of stars, fizzing of comets, gasping of blood, surrender of eyes, drumline of heartbeat
verifying presence, throbbing
in the tip
of the finger

Theory of Relativity

When the pupils of your eyes
Contract to the density of
Black holes,
The world and I sharpen up,
Assume the shape and contour
With the minutest precision.

When they dilate, the world
Gets out of focus, the universe
Spills over the edges,
And takes me adrift into a
Land with no boundaries,
Where my end is your beginning.

Haiku

Like a breath
Exhaled in close proximity
The warmth of you
Clings in the air.

Free Falling

Eyes wide open
Arms eagle-spread
And no parachutes,
Do not fear –
This is only free falling
(At the same speed)
Into the arms of a
Cherry tree.

Interstellar Misunderstanding

The universal translator was
Dead.
When the visitors arrived, all we had
Were groans:
They didn’t understand,
Things remained unsaid.
We thought they were hostile,
They thought we were dumb,
There was no choice but
To pull out the guns.
It was a massacre
But who was to blame?
Communication failure,
Our reports claim.

And yet,
Sometimes,
To shorten
Cosmic nights,
I wonder still:
Was it a glitch
In the translating machine
Or, simply
A chronic, and blind
Lack of will?

Home (2)

Home is my name, spoken softly,
With the right cadence,
In my mother’s voice.

Home is the pink glow
Of the late-afternoon sun,
Lengthening my shadow.

Home is the warmth of my feet
Tucked under you,
On a windy day.

Home (1)

A sudden gust of recollection
Sends the memory dust swirling
Into shape, compressing the loosened
Particles into the body of
This street, this sky, these footfalls.

In concentric circles, the moment
Spreads out, fills up
The mind with the past replicated
In the crisp air, pierced sharply
With the whiff of spring.

This is home: the familiar essence
Of another day, another street,
Distilled and reassembled
In a split-second flash, asserting
The comfort of occupying your own life.

Finger-Nails

On good days, they grow
To preserve the goodness
A little more solidly, a little more visibly,
Inscribing the past we no longer have
At our fingertips.

On bad days, they press on
To expose the badness,
Enshrine it and offer as sacrifice
In a purging ritual,
The cutting of the unwanted.

On most days, they grow
Out of habit and boredom,
Marking meticulously
The parallel lives
Our bodies lead, precise and separate.

Consistency

I can hear you in my laughter
When you stay to share the joke,
You can catch me unawares
In an echo of a word,
If I listen, you are humming
Somewhere in the other room.

Faithful ghost to needy master,
Yours is not an easy task:
Consistently, you resurface
Every time I bring you back.

Patience

and when you feel them coming,
stop and listen
carefully, lovingly
see how they shape up
rising and falling
balancing on tiptoe
timidly
don’t push
just watch and wait
let them know you
quietly
in a suspended world
listen,
for the soft-footed visitors
perfect words, only yours
in the poem.

"Distance is Futile": A Quasi-Refutation of a Pro-Globalization Argument

Not the same, my dear
It’s not the same,
Hopping on a plane, exerting the freedom,
Motion, movement and mobility
Spanning the zones, godlike
For brief intense encounters,
Never the same,


My dear, as the small sharing
Of days, unplanned, spontaneous,
Street lengths away,
A local touching of lives
On the edges, along the seams
Growing together, imperceptibly.
Never the same.

Encounters

Not to draw back from a chance
Locking of eyes in the street,
To sustain a few seconds of
Intrusion into a soft tissue,
The guarded privacy,
To gleam back a consciousness
In passing,
An open and absolute
Recognition
Of a random life,
Walking away.

Courage after 80

(for Desanka Milosevic)

It isn’t the two hundred miles you walked
Straddling the wars, carrying
The children in the palm of your hand -
Not the unslept morning you decided
To live, after he pronounced you
Dead, irrevocably -
Nor the longlost girlhood you
Buried with the touched-up photographs\
And your proud drum-kit.

No, what makes you brave
And beautiful
Is what you do every day:
A perpetual letting go,
A skillful selflessness,
Small acts of welcome and farewell
For all the loved ones,
Walking in and out,
Oblivious.

The Moment

nothing else,
after that perfect fit
of a forehead against the inside
of a chin.
nothing more,
beyond that solidity
of rightness, infecting the landscape,
permeating
this
dream.

Emil

(during a videotaped interview, in which he explains how the other kids in the street killed his dog)

Caught in a black video-tape
Your eyes flutter, embarrassed.
Startled to life by the camera, an old
Pain gathers gingerly on your brow,
Weighs down your glance.

You sit quietly, looking down.
A poppy-seed of a boy with a horizon
Of sorrow in the pocket. It’s not for sharing,
You seem to say, but unfold it
In the palm, gently, for a second.

If you look up, the world behind the lens
Will drown, the planet
Will gasp with ages of grief, unfit
To stand in your shoes for a minute,
Unable to breathe with a punctured soul.

A small twitch at the corner of the lips,
A tiny tremor of the chin,
Announces an earthquake, an internal
Bleeding, a battle to contain the blast
And a question

Will you forgive us?

Orpheus

when did you stop following,
my shadow people,
when did you tire of waiting
for me to turn around
and acknowledge you with a glance,
honor you with a flagging pace
of one who finally remembers?

at which corner did you stop
and watch me go unprotected
and undeserving,
rushing along my forward course,
how many slipstreamed oversights
did it take before you knew
i was a waste of time?

could i retrace my empty steps
i’d turn around, slowly
and walk back to where you stopped.
i’d follow a backward path
to undo my life without you,
my shadow people,
to love you, standing still and quiet.

The Web

I weaved it soft, this web of mine
In days of anger, in days of love
It held the weight of dreams and fears
It caught the fall of slouching wills.

I laced it fine, this net of days
Along the hem of barefoot joy
It kept us warm, it kept us close
Gently knit of silent prose.

You’ll never need a safety-net
I know, and yet I weave my web.
It’s there to hold fast, and to seize
The happiness, and love, and years.

An Easter Island Death

like stone heads falling
massively
into the tall grass,
like soul rolling
out of the carved eyes
something ended
solidly
after a thousand years
a civilization
rolled thin and gasped
in my heart.

Water

“... si j’avais cinquante-trois minutes à dépenser, je marcherais tout doucement vers une fontaine...”



Perhaps it would be better
And slower,
And clearer,
To have to walk for miles
Steadily,
Mindlessly,

To fetch a jug of water.

And then to walk back, carrying
The seconds,
The minutes,
Preserved in the distance,
Crystallized,
Galvanized,

In the absence of a tap.

The Technicolour Eye

I am a tool, I help you feel
Chromatic glories of human life,
I paint your picture in favoured hues
And shade the depth where sight is flat,
I take you in for colour-feasts
And make you think you see the light.

I am a weapon, I lend you smiles
Of one oblivious to fact,
I show you rainbows but explain
Only two colours, black and white.

Fixed

The infinite grace of a tight-rope walker,
Seconds before the fall,
Bedazzles the knowing into a vacuum
Of vaporized thoughts,
Beguiles the logic into a blank spot
Of a foot perfectly poised,
Safe in the muscle-memorized habit
Above the frozen applause.

If I am the walker, you’ll have to promise,
Seconds before the fall,
To break the spell of infinite stupor
And give me a gentle push.
Amidst the horror, cries and commotion
Let in the tide again.

The Final Cut

i look at it calmly.
the eyes are pleading,
the fear twitching at the nerve-
ends. voiceless faceless howl,
and a floating thought: how
long until i wring your
neck?

it reflects me back and
projects itself in fast-motion,
dancing one last dance for
the backturned director
gone bankrupt and plagued
by mismatched metaphors.
see?

i watch the unrolling
days of a past recognizably
mine, the narrative i
never wanted solidified
into one last plea for
life, a precocious
liturgy.

i look at it long.
someone has to cave.

A Fling

i was a reward
given to the needy
imperceptibly.
with ribbon and bow
i fell into a palm
unaware and tight,
not asking for it.
and then.
the ribbon and bow
got frayed and worn out,
the giver and palm
don’t remember a thing,
and i,
i’m left with myself
in this
existential fling.

Post-Amnesiac

it is all there
it has always been
in that bird’s eye
in the light behind that tree
telescoping the long shadows in the snow
the orange-hemmed giants in the sky
it is all here
and has always been
even when forgotten, blindly
my hands full of words
my thoughts suspended
weightless in abstraction
it is all here
my gravitational force
my day reborn
my moments shuffled
into rediscovered forms.

Two

(to C.O.M.)

What if there were two, side by side
Even when they called, it’s not yours,
Always two, side by side, blind but two,
Like two clouds, seen from upside down?

What if there were two, all this time
And some couldn’t see, wouldn’t look,
Heads up high, hearts down deep, never see,
Like two seeds, twining each to each?

What if there were two, then no more,
Would there be a change, infinite,
Like a God, emptiness, my shadow
Eagle-spread, and then only one.

"My April Love,"

this one is a willful lie
a looking into the heart
of a split second
pretending i knew it all
much before you asked
that’s me there
behind the face of certainty
braking it gently
dismantling it irrevocably
pretending i knew it all
much before the final word
that’s me again
playing an old game
with the cruelty of self-termination
you asked and were flown
to outer space, safely distant
you asked
and the world stopped for a moment
to spit me out
sick with my decision

The Bravest Day in My Life

let go
says the voice
above the din of panic,
unmistakable and familiar
for all my reluctance.
let go
i hear the whisper
against the void of knowledge
welling unstoppably with
the final release.
relax your muscles
unclench your fists
breathe out the tension
that holds you transfixed
and just let go.
i strain every nerve
frantic for a rejoinder,
my heartbeat is racing
in an unknown direction,
my body has curled up
against the decision,
i’m shutting down
against the intrusion, I’m…

in the sound-proof moment
of a flash recognition
i feel my own lips
shaping around
the letting go.
and it is suddenly
all very clear.

Symphony

(to BiH)

this is a symphony
for the dead
this is an awakening
the music to soothe the corpse
of history
the adagio for the blood of my blood
belated and bullet-proof
self-righteous and blade-resistant
this is an exercise in futility
this is a symphony
for the dead and not buried
four thousand in one hole
what do you say
this is a lullaby
for a bathtub dangling naked
for the shelled stampedes
and all the little pioneers.

something went wrong.

this is a symphony
for the dead
this is an awakening.

In This Yard

purple dreams bubble-clear,
blooming words springing up
among three hesitations,
growing roots and dying,
duly,
orange sounds mounting up
to further skies with more ears,
clearing throat, harsh and hurt

after all that silence

all unfurling, all begetting
purple dreams full of words,
someone’s words, not a whistle
blooming dying rooting
in this yard.

Garbage Pile

i think i have found them,
quiet beneath my heart
grown fat with decades of silence
unpracticed and shy but mine.
i know who put them there:
distilled through music,
all in soft fingertips,
with sunshine in her voice,
she sang to me.

and then I saw that
garbage pile
at the traffic lights outside the steamy bus window
where they hid and called in whispers
and i felt them with half recognition.

they must have been mine all along,
round the corner of the lip
on the inside of the smile
in the flutter of the mind,
patient and ready to be found.

these are my words.
and this is me.

Zombie

(for Bane)

a voice from across childhood
caught me unawares
unprepared, in midstep
between disremembering
and daydreaming.


suddenly stirred back to history
i stop short
and follow the voice into a memory
of a downcast glance and the letters of my name
on a slip of paper,
a splinter of wood removed from my hand
by clumsy gentle fingers,
purple flowers against a softened boyish face
in an abandoned phone booth.


i know it was you,
standing at the door of my high school
that new year’s.
i know it was you,
passing me by wordless
in the crowd.
i know it was you
i pretended not to see,
and crossed the street
into oblivion.


for a moment the voice lingers
ringing like a silver bell
then fades out in a blink,
disremembered
out of existence.

1/1/2001: Instead of the Resolutions

will she know me
the pouting girl with the braids
tied with the trimmings of a curtain,
will she recognize me
the girl crying among the flowers
behind the house,
and if i go
a is a o is o
that is really all I know
will she hear the code
of a sunny afternoon happy on a swing…
will she look me in the eye
and sit there, little and frightened
or maybe angry
and demand the return of
the words the colours and the songs
she once lent me
in good faith of a wide-eyed child
the words the colours and the songs
which i left out in the rain
carelessly
left them sad and misused
to rust and rot and fester
with betrayal…

maybe if i tell her
that i am starting today
that i am piecing the parts together
that i am coming out from behind my brow
and trying really trying
to open that door
maybe she’ll smile and wave
among the flowers.

Nostalgia and Christopher Marlowe at a Late Hour on a Winter Evening

(for James)

Eating a kiwi, I thought of you tonight
And that “light-filled” garden, as you say…
And I wonder, was it the late summer herbs,
Or the comet (it hung over our roof for
The whole month, remember?), or
The voices of the dead enshrined in the
Stones clicketi-clacketting under our shoes,
That made us wise “beyond our years,”
As you say?


Try as it might, my memory will not stretch back
To the very first moment we met; I have
A vague notion we both wore black
And were just two silent silhouettes
Sharp against a deep-blue evening sky.
Do you know, I was almost mad at you,
Later that evening, for trying to set me up
With somebody whose name I don’t remember
Any more (Paul, was it?)…

I can still see that garden. Tall grass
(They never really trimmed it before the first
Snow, did they?), the rose bushes with two
Guardian-swans, the ice-cold pool (with
Dead squirrels on the bottom, the story has it),
The Chinese pavillion enveloped in its mystery,
And, for some reason, an idle zeppelin,
Hovering carelessly in the heavy summer air.
And me, outstretched, being aware.

These are your words, we were aware,
Of every moment. Did it prolong our
Allotted time, or did it shorten it, I wonder.
Would it have happened, without awareness?
I eat my kiwi and I think of you,
Doing cartwheels around the gigantic oak-tree;
I think of me in the enchanted garden
And I know I am committing a crime
Of sentimentality. But I look out at the snow,
And I am aware.

(what people mean when they talk of wordiness)

you'll be back full and replenished
and i'll be smaller than a poppy seed
(funny how translation never works)
with and quite without
like the christmas light across the street
glittering in my window but not mine.

you'll slip into yourself, routinely
and i'll recognize myself in the absence
(i'm good with the negatives)
to have and have not
like the fluff of the world
behind the closed eyes.

and then one indistinguishable day
all the unwords will crawl across the nothingness in between
(just empty words really)
me and you
and the world will be richer
for a perfect, most exquisite, and irrevocably beautiful

open fracture of a soul.

Decontextualized

i am my only
frame of reference,
i swallowed the world
when it wasn't looking,
my edges are hazy, my outline blurry,
i exist only provisionally.

my feet are inventing
where i am going,
my hands are molding
what i am touching,
you are a drawing
inside my eye. how lonely.

unseen, untouched
unheard and unspoken,
i'm hanging by threads
of my awareness;
i'm writing myself
into a poem.