Tablets IV

I wanted to write an epic about suffering,

but when I found a tendril

of her hair among the ruins

of her mud house,

I found my epic there.

2

I didn’t sleep last night.

As if the night

were hiding in the morning coffee.

3

Her life is a game of snakes and ladders

sent relentlessly back to square one,

but whose life isn’t? She takes a breath

and throws the dice again.

4

The city glitters below

the airplane window, not because

of the bones and skulls scattered

under the sun, but the view

through the frosted breather hole.

5

She died, and time changed

for those she loved most,

but her watch kept ticking.

6

A god carried the burdens

until the weight persuaded him

to transfer them to man — 

the new suffering god.

7

The map of Iraq looks like a mitten,

and so does the map of Michigan — 

a match I made by chance.

8

If you can’t save people,

at least don’t hate them.

9

Her bubbling annoys me — 

can’t understand a word she says.

So what if I toss her from the aquarium?

So what if I spill her new world

with this nasty immigrant fish!

10

The city’s innumerable lights

turning on and off remind us

we are born to arrive,

as we are born to leave.

11

The handkerchiefs are theirs,

but the tears are ours.

12

Women running barefoot.

Behind them, stars falling from the sky.

13

So strange,

in my dream of us,

you were also a dream.

14

He said to me: You are in my eyes.

Now when he sleeps,

his eyelids cover me.

15

Gilgamesh stopped wishing

for immortality,

for only in death could he be certain

of seeing his friend Enkidu again.

16

Some say love means

putting all your eggs

in one basket.

If they all break,

can the basket remain intact?

17

The homeless are not afraid

to miss something.

What passes through their eyes

is how the clouds pass over the rushing cars,

the way pigeons miss some of the seeds

on the road and move away.

Yet only they know

what it means to have a home

and to return to it.

18

The wind and rain

don’t discriminate

in buffeting us.

We are equal

in the eyes of the storm.

19

When I was broken into fragments,

you puzzled me

back together

piece by piece.

I no longer fear

being broken

in any moment.

20

Freezing in the mountains

without blankets or food,

and all they heard was

no news is good news.

21

Their stories didn’t kill me

but I would die if I didn’t

tell them to you.

22

Before killing them

they collected their personal effects.

Their cell phones are all ringing

in the box.

23

We are not upset when

the grass dies. We know

it will come back

in a season or two.

The dead don’t come back

but they appear every time

in the greenness of the grass.

24

If yearning encircles us,

what does it portend?

That a circle has no beginning

and no end?