| Home |
| About UniVerse |
| Poets by Nation |
| Poetry + New Media |
| Support UniVerse |
|
Proposal I think of god as a little bird who takes To staying close to the earth, The destiny of little wings To exaggerate the wind And peck the ground. I see Haifa By my father and your father’s sea, The sea with little living in it, Fished out like a land. I think of a little song and How there must be a tree. I choose the sycamore I saw split in two Minaret trunks on the way To a stone village, in a stone-thrower mountain. Were the villagers wrong to love Their donkeys and wheat for so long, To sing to the good stranger Their departure song? I think of the tree that is a circle In a straight line, future and past. I wait for the wind to send God down, I become ready for song. I sing, in a tongue not my own: We left our shoes behind and fled. We left our scent in them Then bled out our soles. We left our mice and lizards There in our kitchens and on the walls. But they crossed the desert after us, Some found our feet in the sand and slept, Some homed in on us like pigeons, Then built their towers in a city coffin for us . . . I will probably visit you there after Haifa. A little bird to exaggerate the wind And lick the salt off the sea of my wings. I think God reels the earth in when the sky rains Like fish on a wire. And the sea, each time it reaches the shore, Becomes a bird to see of the land What it otherwise wouldn’t. And the wind through the trees Is the sea coming home.
The Tea and Sage Poem At a desk made of glass, In a glass walled-room With red airport carpet, An officer asked My father for fingerprints, And my father refused, So another offered him tea And he sipped it. The teacup Template for fingerprints. My father says, it was just Hot water with a bag. My father says, in his country, Because the earth knows The scent of history, It gave the people sage. I like my tea with sage From my mother’s garden, Next to the snapdragons She calls fishmouths Coming out for air. A remedy For stomach pains she keeps In the kitchen where She always sings. First, she is Hagar Boiling water Where tea is loosened. Then she drops In it a pinch of sage And lets it sit a while. She tells a story: The groom arrives late To his wedding Wearing only one shoe. The bride asks him About the shoe. He tells her He lost it while jumping Over a house-wall, Breaking away from soldiers. She asks: Tea with sage Or tea with mint? With sage, he says. Sweet scent, bitter tongue. She makes it, he drinks.
Additional Notes On Tea In Cairo a boy’s balcony higher than a man’s deathbed. The boy is sipping tea, The view is angular like a fracture. Surrounding the bed, women in wooden chairs. They signal mourning with a scream. Family men on the street run up the stairs and drink raven tea. On the operating table in Solwezi a doctor watches a woman die. Tea while the anesthetic wears off, While the blade is waiting, tea. The doctor says the woman knows god is sleeping Outside heaven in a tent. God is a refugee dreaming of tea. Once upon a time an ocean married a sea to carry tea around. Land was jealous. So it turned into desert and gave no one wood for ships. And when ships became steel, Land turned into ice. And when everything melted, everything tasted like tea. Once upon a time there was a tea party in Boston. Tea, like history, is a non sequitur. I prefer it black. The Chinese drink it green.
|
|
