The End of Exile

As the dead, so I come

to the city I am of.

Am without.

To watch play out around me

as theater — 

audience as the dead are audience

to the life that is not mine.

Is as not

as never.

Turning down Shiraz’s streets

it turns out to be such

a faraway thing.

A without which

I have learned to be.

From bed, I hear a man in the alley

selling something, no longer by mule and holler

but by bullhorn and jalopy.

How to say what he is selling — 

it is no thing

this language thought worth naming.

No thing I have used before.

It is his

life I don’t see daily.

Not theater. Not play.

Though I remain only audience.

It is a thing he must sell daily

and every day he peddles

this thing: a without which

I cannot name.

Without which is my life.