And the speaker in the next poem,
which is called "The Thousand and First Night,"
is of course Scheherazade, who for 1,000 nights
told stories every night to the sultan who
was going to marry her and then on the wedding night
kill her, strangle her as he had done previous wives.
And she saved herself, as you recall,
by telling these stories and saving
the end until the next night.
And he was so interested in hearing the ending of the story
that he always let her live one more night so he could find out
the end-- he could find out the ending and then, of course,
she started a new story that same night.
Well, the presumption is that after the 1,000 nights
that she lived happily ever after with him.
But I wonder--
"I did what the rug makers do--
begin at the edges, leave no gaps, tie all loose ends,
connect everything.
I have worked us into the center, king and queen enclosed
by the fantastic hedge of animals and plants
I invented to keep me alive.
My husband points to his newly acquired heart
which shows bright as glass through the skin
and beats as fast as a cuckoo's against my cheek.
Oh, the mercy of language whose spellbound figures inhabit
the walls of the mind until the monster
finally dreams his human origins.
Tonight no one dies in this kingdom.
By morning I will have turned into a character,
stripped of foresight, ignorant of connections,
and the only story I cannot invent.
A tale of horror perhaps, bloody and short.
It may cancel all benign transformations.
I look at my husband, the strangler's hands:
lunar, disarmed by sleep, perfumed by my skin.
I cannot imagine how this story ends.