you regret that he still waits for you,
you are happy you don’t have to say anything to him.
The birds in the sky look like the combs in your hair.
The snow under our feet resembles an engraving.
□ □ □
The snows pass, and in the green mist
of every Maytime
women stop time in the kitchen,
cooking moons as if they were cheese.
At night warm smoke rises from the pots
and the yellow moons
endure, and even the heaviest
only leaves ripples in the river.
Every moon has its own space in the kitchen
among the knives, drawers, and scales,
and each name is as long and full as a drink,
drenched with the voices of women.
Their uncertain weights
are lightened with cries and songs,
the women carry them out to the shore
for refugees, runaways, and killers.
The suns of fishermen and the stars of shepherds,
pour light, like song,
on the dark bronze shore birds
and carp heavy with silver.
Because all the women stick to the mist,
forgetting during the day but remembering at night
secrets engravers, weavers, and antiquarians
shared with them,
they stand for a long time by the fire,
taking on thousands of poisons,
as long as the mud lies on the bottom,
and the silence grows cold on the rooftops.
As long as their moons last,
and there is enough light,
grass grows to penetrate the dead,
grass grows to hold on to the living.
□ □ □
I say, “So what if nothing is understood?
So what if we have to start everything all over again?
Every soul inhabits a body,
and every door leads to a room.
“Every space is full of its own radio shows.
Every heart grows flowers and algae.
So what if all this could have been predicted?
So what if you have no idea how to talk about this?
“I passed through these twenty-four-hour twilights,
I know how to fight off attacks and trauma.
But I still have so much love left
that it could stop the plague at the gates of the city.
“I know how the fire dies down in a woman’s voice.
I carried that poison in my own pockets.
But I still have so much tenderness and anger
that it could raise lepers and hanged men from their graves.
“So they will follow me through the golden nights—
tired clowns, defenseless sleepwalkers.
So what if you have no idea where to begin?
So what if nothing comes of things between us?”
She listens to me, slightly swaying.
She walks out and then returns.
She is silent, agreeing with me about everything.
She smiles, not believing a single word I say.
□ □ □
May your delicate throat never get cold
and may your night songs never end.
The devil will stand over you with a bronze military horn,
blocking the fierce tides at your headboard.
Let the smell of wind never disappear from your T-shirts,
let it play in your hair forever.
I will live in the sound of Sirens, like worries,
recognizing your breath in their harmonizing voices.
I will eat bread in detention centers,
sleep with black refugees in gyms,
find your aroma in the dry air and
overripe earth like a testimony at midnight.
I will sing of this ruined country,
disintegrating from the poison in its blood,
I will remind everyone who passes by of their guilt,
I will chew the twilight rich with color.
The sun rises in the east every morning past the market,
there is a different reason for each loss,
there will never be a silence like the one over your building,
there will never be a moon like the one just past your shoulders.
May you be warmed by wine someone else opened,
may tenderness fill your careless speech:
children will learn to love when they learn a kind of love
they can understand, untranslated, whether summer or winter.
□ □ □
What will you remember about these times?
Memory washes out all the voices,
memory doesn’t remember any names, any titles,
but you must remember, remember each of us.
Remember how we were in love with your face,
even if you didn’t like it, remember it,
even if you didn’t believe how serious our diseases were,
even if you didn’t doubt the hopelessness of all our attempts,
even if you can’t remember our names,
even if the colors of our banners annoyed you,
the language of our declarations of love,
the biographies of our saints,
the weapons, wine, and books in our houses.
Remember everything we wrote to you in our letters,
remember how many of us died in faraway towns,
remember how many of us were broken and sold out,
remember at least one of us,
even in the passing.
Remember how we’d catch your words,
remember our failures and our amazing feats,
our loyalty, our courage, our fears,
and carry our love with you like old sins.
Whether you want it or not, there will be nothing without you.
Our hearts rest on river bottoms like naval mines.
Remember each retreat, remember each attack—
if you can, remember everything till death, at least.
□ □ □
And then she says,
“I know how this will end:
it will end by everything finally ending.
I will suffer, you will keep catching more and more of the dead,
releasing the ones you caught before.”
But I tell her,
“No one will suffer.
No one will ever suffer again.
Why does poetry even exist,
why do canals and shafts open up into the air?
“Why do we fill the emptiness
with poetry and holiday carols, why prepare escapes?
Any decent poet can use words to stop
the bleeding.”
Then she asks,
“Why do these decent poets behave like children?
Why do they live like aliens and die like criminals?
Why can’t they end that
at least?”
So I say, “Because it’s hard to live with other bodies,
because the holy men of words have their own incomprehensible plans,
because there are no decent poets left,
just thieves and charlatans.