And then, a longish poem made up of 14 short sections entitled
"Wrinkles On the Wind's Forehead."
The wind is a blind mother, stumbling over the corpses.
No shrouds except the clouds, but the dogs are much faster.
2.
The moon is a graveyard for light.
The stars, women, wailing.
3.
The wind was tired of carrying the coffins.
It leaned against the palm tree.
A satellite inquired, where to now?
The silence in the winds came, murmured Baghdad,
and the palm tree caught fire.
4.
The soldier's fingers scrape and scrabble
like question marks or sickles.
They search the womb of the wind for weapons.
Nothing but smoke and depleted uranium.
5.
My heart is a stork perched on a distant dome in Baghdad.
Its nest is made of bones, it's cry of death.
6.
This is not the first time myths wash their face with our blood.
There they are, looking into the horizon's mirror
as they don our bones.
7.
Wars elevates tyrants and historians pants,
and the wrinkled smiles on the face
of a child who will play during a break between wars.
8.
The Euphrates is a long procession,
cities padded shoulders, and palm trees weep.
9.
The child plays in time's garden,
but war calls upon her from inside, come on in.
10.
The grave is a mirror into which the child looks and dreams.
When will I grow up and be like my father?
Dead.
11.
Tigris and Euphrates are two strings in death lute,
and we are but songs or fingers strumming.
12.
For two and a half wars I've been here
in this room whose window is a grave
that I am afraid of opening.
There is a mirror on the wall.
When I stand before it, my bones laugh
and I hear death's fingers tickling the door.
12.
I place my ear on the belly of this moment.
I hear wailing.
I put it on another moment.
I hear the same thing.