Madinat al-Zahra—wasn't that the name
of my jasmine ruin, my source of jasmine
when, trailing Lorca and the Sephardim,

 

Is that what he's saying? You can't be sure—
And this isn't the usual stance of prayer;
Still, it's what I hear as I look at him—

It could have been a matter of modesty
It could have been the gold sewn in your dress
You might even have feared for your chastity

I heard tales of it on trains, from tireless travelers
And then its name would beckon from the drowsing hulls
Of steamers docked on Venice’s back piers

Perhaps, like everything, it has its flow and ebb,
The way nowhere, I mean, your brutal question.
Not that you were asking me. You asked no one

It was foolish planning to arrive at noon 
But, in retrospect, it doesn’t really matter. 
There was a bar, after all, where we bought water 

It was hard climbing in the stifling heat
With my enormous belly up that hill
But, probably, the belly stood me well.

In Klee’s “Mural from the Temple of Longing”
Thick, dark arrows from each skyscraper window
Head “thither” in opposite directions, into

For so long, I have wanted relatively nothing
Except, perhaps, this chance to write it down:
Here, for example, near a fire in a cold house,
A wide, full valley out my window