ADDITIONS TO THE PAST

The letters are in the widow’s room
in the straw basket
on the bed that is purged from sleep,
and within the will to fast, a will that permeates the corridor’s air
 
The vegetables that are usually bought in the mornings,
the tickets, Thursday’s bus at dawn,
the pillows
candles
and the patience where a prayer is pampered in a carving

The closet’s corner through the door’s opening,
and the door, when the hymns swim gathered like handkerchiefs
in the darkness of the plains,
the air’s shadow and the novel,
the one she didn’t return to the shelf, or can’t remember
if she did or not, its protagonists
fall to the ground dead
and she sweeps them one
                                    by one
with broom, reproach, and supplication
 
The letters that have not been opened yet
and the dead
return through the door’s opening to steal
the bud vase
the orange sheets
and blankets.

BLACK HORSES

The enemy’s dead think mercilessly of me in their eternal sleep
while the ghosts take to the stairs and house corners
the ghosts that I picked off the road and gathered like necklaces
from others’ necks and sins.
 
Sin goes to the neck…there I raise my ghosts, feed them
and they swim like black horses in my sleep.
 
With the energy of a dead person the last Blues song rises
while I think of jealousy
the door is a slit open and breath enters through the cracks, the river’s
respiration, the drunks
and the woman who wakes to her past in the public garden…
 
                        and when I fall asleep
            I find a horse grazing grass
                        whenever I fall asleep
            a horse comes to graze my dreams.
 
On my desk in Ramallah there are unfinished letters and photos of old
friends,
a poetry manuscript of a young man from Gaza, a sand hourglass,
and poem beginnings that flap like wings in my head.
 
I want to memorize you like that song in elementary school
the one I carry whole without errors
with my lisp and tilted head and dissonance…
the little feet that stomp the concrete ground with fervor
the open hands that bang on desks…
 
All died in war, my friends and classmates…
and their little feet, their excited hands, remained
stomping the classroom floors, the dining tables and sidewalks,
the backs and shoulders of pedestrians…
wherever I go
I hear them
I see them.

A Picture of the House in Beit Jala

He has to return to shut that window,
it isn’t entirely clear
whether this is what he must do,
things are no longer clear
since he lost them,
and it seems a hole somewhere within him
has opened up
 
Filling in the cracks has exhausted him,
mending the fences
wiping the glass
cleaning the edges
and watching the dust that seems, since he lost the things,
to lure his memories into hoax and ruse.
From here his childhood appears as if it were a trick!
Inspecting the doors has fully exhausted him,
the window latches
the condition of the plants
and wiping the dust
that has not ceased flowing
into the rooms, on the beds, sheets, pots
and on the picture frames on the walls
 
Since he lost them he stays with friends
who become fewer,
sleeps in their beds
that become narrower
while the dust gnaws at his memories “there”
 
…he must return to shut that window
the upper story window which he often forgets
at the end of the stairway that leads to the roof
 
Since he lost them
he aimlessly walks
and the day’s small
purposes are also no longer clear.
 

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