Nights—the long interims—when for a time 
one’s mind is stifled in the stardust-storm...

     Yet day does come—again all’s well— 

I can bang at the lyre, but make it sing?
Each time the muse whistles through my spine,
she numbs like a drug, and I nod

Weeks after her death I came to the garden window
to marvel at sudden pale feathers catching, scattering
past the rainy glass. I looked for magic everywhere.
Signs from the afterlife that I was, indeed, distinct.

Molds are made, two figures cast,
their plaster bodies glistening and since
light across a modulated surface

If I had known I'd reduce you to this,
I would've stopped myself along the way
to see the shape your shoulders took—

Outside my window, branches are breaking off the trees. The sound of glass shattering
fills my afternoons. I tell myself, this is natural for March: the frozen rain coating each limb.
The weight, the breaking begins when the sky turns plum—we are at tea (the children try

al-Baghdadi picks his teeth with an archaic toothbrush. 
Salvadora persica from Babylon, 
a twig twisted green from the mustard tree.

I guess like losing anything, I thought
it was coming back at first. And then days
crowded round with nowhere else to go—

 On the western ghats of the city,
Children are bathing.
Husbands are burning their wives;

Blind bow spirit,

                           my mother,

                                               Beatrice