Your cooing wears me out at night—
                    so wear me out.
Like wine in the odes, you go on cooing
and leave me what moves horses
                                                to tears,
what weighs birds down with more wings,
what singing follows

Your coo is a cradle
                                                            kept from rocking
                    cornered by absence.

Is the tree of the heart enough
If our wind was shattered
and we too were shattered with the wind?

Is the tree of the heart made of our blood,
                           or mirage? A question seduces me shooting star by shooting star
                           a flower a flower or two
numb upon my arm
                  as dawn steals blue
to bathe the dew
                          so I see it.
And for this question, the gazelle,
                  and what binds us
in the nets of the answer
—and so the sky won’t be confined—
I’ll release a flock of stray doves
and open the towers of my spirit for
                                                           the day to come-
So if your cooing drowns me,
                   let me drown—
and if you wake me up I’ll leave a crack of dream open
                                                                                                    and sleep

A cell in the Palestine division, 1987