Wash out the blood and know it’s not your own.
                      Think there will be choirs when you go home.

The possibility came and went, came and went;

I’m glad to feel you breathing. There is time,
There will be time, we must make time for words,

How can I breathe, without air? you asked yourself.
(I’m wondering about that, too.)

Elsewhere, the tree-of-heaven grows—
in deserted parking lots,

The miracle began with a miracle.
I was sitting in my gold-trimmed chariot
(well, not exactly my chariot—like all

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

By now, sir, you expect a second installment.
What novel is worth its ink if the hero's ship
never finishes sinking, if the cold tide

How formal and polite,
How grave they look, burdened with earnest thoughts,
In all these set-up sepia stills,

Lady of the two feathers; the Nile where your shoulders
should have been, the way I was born out of your head
whole, out of your wig-crown and frozen oneeye; limestone