Where each drop of blood
struck: lips in the dirt.

the bird falls, but
not killed by the copper bead,
only wounded and fluttering;

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

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

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

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

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

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

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—