Who walks wearily within me
at a time when your wound does not sleep?

Baghdad
I will divest you of your morgue
so long to grasp
I will divest you at the heart of things
at the pinnacle of my childhood.

We must still traverse
side by side
the mad ravings
of the doubles who observe us.

Does my memory still fail to decipher
the underside of things?

I want you to be
like a palm tree every evening
dizzily bowing its petioles.

We must still traverse
side by side
the barbed wire of words.

To the dawn’s murmuring
in the close crooks of your rivers laying in wait for their prey
I was the stranger.

This shard of mirror
this frail breath
this age
must hold our memories.

I love thinking of you Baghdad
from the outside
from far away
from very far away
till my head spins
sitting by your side in the terraced gardens of the Euphrates.