I would like/ in a faraway language/ to tell you what I don’t/ understand

She tells me not to be / a holy land / or a mine of tenderness

The father’s house is a living language/ Open to guests passing through

This particular Tartar is unbeatable at cards/ Except for whist (not a game for Tartars)

A Black man is always somebody's Black man.

Time, lord of the hours / reigns sovereign

a chair standing by itself on a highway / means its life is over

Dissonant music lingers in the bodiless ear of the present tense

We have found in the deterioration of flesh and bones a spiritual liberation

Hope in the right place, you said, is hope misplaced

Who can escape his own charisma

I know there is the curse of god and the curse of being human

We left toys with wilted smiles on the beds

It had rained, / The lilacs were rejoicing.

no disputes / chroniclers and chronicled as one / reunification, yes, reunification

The light retires to the lamp / and suddenly all is dark again

Soaking in time he sees fallen Estoril

Contemplating a family heirloom, a ruminative Amarjit Chandan finds the past staring back at him.

Morning starts / when lights turn green.

I will not accept this old age / grafted slyly on my body.

I can’t stand that one the way someone with a chronic sinus infection can’t stand abnormal shifts in weather.

you’ve no idea what it means to stand in a sausage line!

The pawn shop, where we sold your rings, / was shuttered.

I hope and despair at the same moment

I / am stolen splendor on a darkened street

“Roadkill’s something you get used to seeing in America”

Still we couldn't stop writing.

We searched for the words. We sipped our tea / looking down the bitter well of the past . . .

These songs to Mother Earth in a major key / are whispers that come from distant forests

We are life, this way

Are they more beautiful than me?

When the thunder of guns tears out the tongue from the nightingale

Hyacinth! Lift your head your head from within the mud

You kindled hope in me. Now fill my cups.

It's this: we’re seeking water / Where there is only thirst.

Everything—including life— / ends when the hands give up.

Our knees were trusting doves; the ribbons in our hair, delicious bait.

Almost no one cares for the wounds of others.

Hardly anyone comes to visit when you live with a tiger.

The post-war ruins (Roofs ripped off, / The charred walls.)

i know the fear in your eyes at dawn. and the crackle of flames, the hidden creaking of the woods, the madness of the birds beating paths in the air.

The day was silent to distraction, / only the dog’s growl traveled beyond the window

But his dirty ears are resistant to their tender entreating, / And the thick lips will not stretch from these ears into a smile

the voices of a body spent / venture new rhymes, / i can’t fathom what they mean to say

Water drinks me while I drink the water itself.

I cannot promise you much but a gray street and passionate darkness in the Ides of March.

A herald will knock on your door / with news about what is yet to come

Soon I will be leaving this town too

drawn by the myth of the streets of gold / Santiago Nasar arrives on rue Barclay and becomes a pusher

Screaming midnight thoughts plunge down to still

All of us / wait / to receive you.

I strike out, rewrite.

Perhaps she wanted her own fires to burn

Exile is accompanied by the idea of solitude.

on the atlas of my skin / your names

Your ruins no longer enchant me.

Finegolden radiating, bursting— / Multicoloredthoughtingness.

I am willing to carve you a ten-second slice of winter.

I’m the pig, I said, you’re just an idiot

Everything clamors: / an hour hand gone berserk.