My Grandmother’s Grave

When my grandmother died I thought, “She can’t die again.” Everything in her life happened once and forever: her bed on our roof, the battle of good and evil in her tales, her black clothes, her mourning for her daughter who “was killed by headaches,” the rosary beads and her murmur, “Forgive us our sins,” her empty vase from the Ottoman time, her braid, each hair a history — First were the Sumerians, their dreams inscribed in clay tablets. They drew palms, so dates ripen before their sorrows. They drew an eye to chase evil away from their city. They drew circles and prayed for them: a drop of water a sun a moon a wheel spinning faster than Earth. They begged: “Oh gods, don’t die and leave us alone.” Over the Tower of Babel, light is exile, blurred, its codes crumbs of songs leftover for the birds. More naked emperors passed by the Tigris and more ships . . . The river full of crowns helmets books dead fish, and on the Euphrates, corpse-lilies floating. Every minute a new hole in the body of the ship. The clouds descended on us war by war, picked up our years, our hanging gardens, and flew away like storks. We said there isn’t any worse to come. Then the barbarians came to the mother of two springs. They broke my grandmother’s grave: my clay tablet. They smashed the winged bulls whose eyes were sunflowers widely open watching the fragments of our first dreams for a lifetime. My hand on the map as if on an old scar.