“All this in a castle of air, the floating world of the assimilated…” – Adrienne Rich, “Sources” 

Two old cities  

on the open sea:  

The chisel of departure 

the autumn gap 

To be oblique or artful 

about this: Crossing 

the threshold I  

go on believing 

The plains: Instructions  

from the time of war 

for a joyous period 

of mourning 

The contorted hand 

in the small chest: 

a talisman 

ill-matched to the fields 

Pig meant once unclean:  

The factories 

homogenized 

rendering 

Now and then he sits in the garden 

with the sound of grace: 

The years measured 

in empty casks 

To simply care 

for others: Insufficient 

ceremony with desert 

lemon palm leaf open-air dwelling 

What is difficult: 

The citizen cries 

in the prison he built 

with his own gold 

Up from underneath 

the floating castle: 

Night-sky gleams wet  

with contract ink 

The ancestor’s schemes 

for the present moment: 

Sparrows that shatter 

the stomach’s peace 

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