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The heart dies without space for love, without a moral horizon: think of it then as a bird trapped in a box. My heart goes out with love to those beyond the fence; only toward them can one really advance, that is, make progress. Without them I feel I’m half a person. Romeo was born a Montague, and Juliet came from the Capulet line, and I’m a disciple of Shakespeare, not Ben Gurion— therefore I’ll be delighted if my daughter marries the grandson of Haidar Abdel Shafi. I mean this, of course, as a parable only—but the parable is my measure, and since it has more to do with my body than teeth or hair, this isn’t just some idle fancy that, out of poetic license, I place our fate in my daughter’s sex. That I grant myself this imaginary gift, testifies to the extent to which we’re living, still, in the underworld, where we’re granted the hope and potential of an amoeba. But all mythology begins with creatures that creep and crawl, spring out of the ground and devour each other, until a sacred union occurs, healing the breach in the world. The Arab groom from Gaza, too, will extend to my daughter a dress on which is embroidered the Land redeemed from Apartheid’s curse— our Land as a whole, belonging equally to all of its offspring, and then he’ll lift the veil from her face, and say to her: “And now I take you to be my wife, Lotem Abdel Shafi.”

he’s only a smart-ass when he’s home with Mandrake he’s silent and obedient as a snail his bald pate bowing into the cape’s trail and dreaming of tales he’ll bore me with his one night home once a month that’s what I get like clockwork and always on the full moon half my allowance he reserves for sheets, tearing them with his teeth to vent the forced silence of those other twenty-odd days did I say odd it’s that one day that’s odd his coming home full of half-tricks he’s picked up from the master the hypnotic hunger he so willingly tries on me he claims he stole me, bought me claims he’s Zulu, Bantu, Beja depending on the hour, day, or year says I was the black spot in the white of his eye the speck he turned into leopard that unwittingly turned into woman neither of us no longer knows what’s real and my mother beats her fat tongue against her gums as each month I try to reveal the puzzle stroking the lines from his hairless obsidian crown I hear her rumbling around in the next room I soothe his sweet head and she moans heaven protect us from all the things to which we can become accustomed

"Courage!" he said, and pointed toward the land, "This mounting wave will roll us shoreward soon." In the afternoon they came unto a land In which it seemed always afternoon. All round the coast the languid air did swoon, Breathing like one that hath a weary dream. Full-faced above the valley stood the moon; And like a downward smoke, the slender stream Along the cliff to fall and pause and fall did seem. A land of streams! some, like a downward smoke, Slow-dropping veils of thinnest lawn, did go; And some thro' wavering lights and shadows broke, Rolling a slumbrous sheet of foam below. They saw the gleaming river seaward flow From the inner land: far off, three mountain-tops, Three silent pinnacles of aged snow, Stood sunset-flush'd: and, dew'd with showery drops, Up-clomb the shadowy pine above the woven copse. The charmed sunset linger'd low adown In the red West: thro' mountain clefts the dale Was seen far inland, and the yellow down Border'd with palm, and many a winding vale And meadow, set with slender galingale; A land where all things always seem'd the same! And round about the keel with faces pale, Dark faces pale against that rosy flame, The mild-eyed melancholy Lotos-eaters came. Branches they bore of that enchanted stem, Laden with flower and fruit, whereof they gave To each, but whoso did receive of them, And taste, to him the gushing of the wave Far far away did seem to mourn and rave On alien shores; and if his fellow spake, His voice was thin, as voices from the grave; And deep-asleep he seem'd, yet all awake, And music in his ears his beating heart did make. They sat them down upon the yellow sand, Between the sun and moon upon the shore; And sweet it was to dream of Fatherland, Of child, and wife, and slave; but evermore Most weary seem'd the sea, weary the oar, Weary the wandering fields of barren foam. Then some one said, "We will return no more"; And all at once they sang, "Our island home Is far beyond the wave; we will no longer roam." CHORIC SONG I There is sweet music here that softer falls Than petals from blown roses on the grass, Or night-dews on still waters between walls Of shadowy granite, in a gleaming pass; Music that gentlier on the spirit lies, Than tir'd eyelids upon tir'd eyes; Music that brings sweet sleep down from the blissful skies. Here are cool mosses deep, And thro' the moss the ivies creep, And in the stream the long-leaved flowers weep, And from the craggy ledge the poppy hangs in sleep." II Why are we weigh'd upon with heaviness, And utterly consumed with sharp distress, While all things else have rest from weariness? All things have rest: why should we toil alone, We only toil, who are the first of things, And make perpetual moan, Still from one sorrow to another thrown: Nor ever fold our wings, And cease from wanderings, Nor steep our brows in slumber's holy balm; Nor harken what the inner spirit sings, "There is no joy but calm!" Why should we only toil, the roof and crown of things? III Lo! in the middle of the wood, The folded leaf is woo'd from out the bud With winds upon the branch, and there Grows green and broad, and takes no care, Sun-steep'd at noon, and in the moon Nightly dew-fed; and turning yellow Falls, and floats adown the air. Lo! sweeten'd with the summer light, The full-juiced apple, waxing over-mellow, Drops in a silent autumn night. All its allotted length of days The flower ripens in its place, Ripens and fades, and falls, and hath no toil, Fast-rooted in the fruitful soil. IV Hateful is the dark-blue sky, Vaulted o'er the dark-blue sea. Death is the end of life; ah, why Should life all labour be? Let us alone. Time driveth onward fast, And in a little while our lips are dumb. Let us alone. What is it that will last? All things are taken from us, and become Portions and parcels of the dreadful past. Let us alone. What pleasure can we have To war with evil? Is there any peace In ever climbing up the climbing wave? All things have rest, and ripen toward the grave In silence; ripen, fall and cease: Give us long rest or death, dark death, or dreamful ease. V How sweet it were, hearing the downward stream, With half-shut eyes ever to seem Falling asleep in a half-dream! To dream and dream, like yonder amber light, Which will not leave the myrrh-bush on the height; To hear each other's whisper'd speech; Eating the Lotos day by day, To watch the crisping ripples on the beach, And tender curving lines of creamy spray; To lend our hearts and spirits wholly To the influence of mild-minded melancholy; To muse and brood and live again in memory, With those old faces of our infancy Heap'd over with a mound of grass, Two handfuls of white dust, shut in an urn of brass! VI Dear is the memory of our wedded lives, And dear the last embraces of our wives And their warm tears: but all hath suffer'd change: For surely now our household hearths are cold, Our sons inherit us: our looks are strange: And we should come like ghosts to trouble joy. Or else the island princes over-bold Have eat our substance, and the minstrel sings Before them of the ten years' war in Troy, And our great deeds, as half-forgotten things. Is there confusion in the little isle? Let what is broken so remain. The Gods are hard to reconcile: 'Tis hard to settle order once again. There is confusion worse than death, Trouble on trouble, pain on pain, Long labour unto aged breath, Sore task to hearts worn out by many wars And eyes grown dim with gazing on the pilot-stars. VII But, propt on beds of amaranth and moly, How sweet (while warm airs lull us, blowing lowly) With half-dropt eyelid still, Beneath a heaven dark and holy, To watch the long bright river drawing slowly His waters from the purple hill— To hear the dewy echoes calling From cave to cave thro' the thick-twined vine— To watch the emerald-colour'd water falling Thro' many a wov'n acanthus-wreath divine! Only to hear and see the far-off sparkling brine, Only to hear were sweet, stretch'd out beneath the pine. VIII The Lotos blooms below the barren peak: The Lotos blows by every winding creek: All day the wind breathes low with mellower tone: Thro' every hollow cave and alley lone Round and round the spicy downs the yellow Lotos-dust is blown. We have had enough of action, and of motion we, Roll'd to starboard, roll'd to larboard, when the surge was seething free, Where the wallowing monster spouted his foam-fountains in the sea. Let us swear an oath, and keep it with an equal mind, In the hollow Lotos-land to live and lie reclined On the hills like Gods together, careless of mankind. For they lie beside their nectar, and the bolts are hurl'd Far below them in the valleys, and the clouds are lightly curl'd Round their golden houses, girdled with the gleaming world: Where they smile in secret, looking over wasted lands, Blight and famine, plague and earthquake, roaring deeps and fiery sands, Clanging fights, and flaming towns, and sinking ships, and praying hands. But they smile, they find a music centred in a doleful song Steaming up, a lamentation and an ancient tale of wrong, Like a tale of little meaning tho' the words are strong; Chanted from an ill-used race of men that cleave the soil, Sow the seed, and reap the harvest with enduring toil, Storing yearly little dues of wheat, and wine and oil; Till they perish and they suffer—some, 'tis whisper'd—down in hell Suffer endless anguish, others in Elysian valleys dwell, Resting weary limbs at last on beds of asphodel. Surely, surely, slumber is more sweet than toil, the shore Than labour in the deep mid-ocean, wind and wave and oar; O, rest ye, brother mariners, we will not wander more.

You better rap, my brother says—he can b-box his ass off. Got DJ scratches and spins, will drop it on the two and four, the three and four. Whatever you need. Me posing my bars:My flows are second to none, come here, son. See how it’s done. Wanted to be a rapper? Check. Thought I was going to the NBA? Check. Father went to prison? Check. Brother too? Check. Mother died when I was eight? Check. Hung pictures of Luke Perry on my bedroom wall? What? Yep, give me a bit, and I’ll sprinkle some subjectivity on it. I loved that dude, his whisper-voice, his lean. Auntie worried on the phone: Girl, he got photos of some white boy all over his walls. Me rocking out to Tom Petty’s “You Don’t Know How It Feels.” Silent head nods do more than throw shade. All black people are fluent in silence. Mangled Baldwin quote? Let’s keep wrenching. Everybody’s fluent in silence. You know what a switchblade glare means. No need to read the look she gave me as I sang,Let me run with you tonight.

The wooden scent of wagons, the sweat of animals—these places keep everything—breath of the cotton gin, black damp floors of the icehouse. Shadows the color of a mirror’s back break across faces.  The luck is always bad.  This light is brittle, old pale hair kept in a letter. The wheeze of porch swings and lopped gates seeps from new mortar. Wind from an axe that struck wood a hundred years ago lifts the thin flags of the town.

Who knows but that Meriwether Lewis’s lost diaries might turn up yet packed in a can in some cramped ex-midden dug up a thousand years from now, that elegant, exfoliate style continue on up the Missouri, into sadness and disrepute, the suicide in a hotel in Tennessee no more important now than the bundle of grasses my friend made out in the woods yesterday and gave to me after a meeting in which she confessed she’s afraid of everything that’s coming. The past I don’t mind, she said, and laughed as if that was something.

Stiff stilts of   herself. Silver bag of   herself with turquoise gilt midriff. (Shake it but no more will fit.) Red lipstick line between the folds — precise — opposite baby’s soft gurgling. Have you lost your passes? Greeks pictured the afterlife as an insipid version of  the world they knew. But they couldn’t see this. Two women, with red mesh crests atop white hair, enter the lounge area; one laughs, “I feel like we should say something.”

Nudes—stark and glistening, Yelling in lurid glee. Grinning faces And raging limbs Whirl over the floor one fire. For a shirt verminously busy Yon soldier tore from his throat, with oaths Godhead might shrink at, but not the lice. And soon the shirt was aflare Over the candle he’d lit while we lay. Then we all sprang up and stript To hunt the verminous brood. Soon like a demons’ pantomime The place was raging. See the silhouettes agape, See the gibbering shadows Mixed with the battled arms on the wall. See gargantuan hooked fingers Pluck in supreme flesh To smutch supreme littleness. See the merry limbs in hot Highland fling Because some wizard vermin Charmed from the quiet this revel When our ears were half lulled By the dark music Blown from Sleep’s trumpet.

Love Is an interruption or an aberration, a force in opposition to the ultimate inertia of the universe, Wrote Marguerite Duras. Whether or not it is worth it it occurs. Whether or not it is to be believed it is. The wind moves us without a frond being needed to be held by a slave girl. The rudiments of sentences are ancient without a mouth needing to remember what it is losing as it lets those words out, something eviller than what they even mean right now, something too evil to be known right now Or ever. I feel sure that even the most culpable people have other qualities secreted away Adjusting their garments in light of fate He turned his head upward, he looked up the white wall. The light from the lamp could be light coming from a great distance, it could be a great distance away, and the wall could be snow it is so beautiful, he said. His head looking up the wall, his eyes looking up it, he said, that nail in the wall could also be beautiful, for so far away.

I am haunted by how much our mothers do not know. How a republic falls because of its backhanded deals, stairwell secrets. My mother does not know I am lying with a man who is darker than me, that we do not have names for how we truly treat our bodies. What we do with them. The other possesses me. Without him the perception of me fails to exist. My mother now is taking her sheers and cutting through live shrimp. When I was a child she peeled each flushed grape until only the pale fleshy bead remained. She placed them onto a plate in one shining mound, deseeded, in front of me. How I sucked and bled the fruit of all their juice, hypnotized in front of the buzz of television in each version of my childhood. I am her daughter. This is certain. I am lying down with a man who is darker than me and maybe this poem is my real republic, my face is my face, or is it stolen from my mother and hung over mine? If I were a dream you could say my countenance was a string of flickering lights made of teeth or an expression unraveling like a carpet into a narrow river of another life. Does truth matter when it's floating face up or face down? The answer to this makes all the difference.