Our eyes rolled wide
Blushed by the challenge
Open to vigilance
We will walk in front of the fire to protect the flame of awakening

We will not close our eyes in honey nights’ sleep
We will not sleep like bellies sated with princely dishes
We will see through the fog
Beyond the barbed wire fences
The firefly consoling the dew

We will not sleep, neither on sick nights nor tired days
With smoldering eyes
And the spirit erected on a brutal sunrise
We will watch over the sprawling of the dancing buds

It’s to the eyes that say no to drowsiness
That the mysteries buried under veils reveal themselves
We will not sleep
We will not experience the joy of bed
So long as the daughter of our torrid rides:
FREEDOM,
Runs Through the meshes of our brains!

NOUS SOMMES DE CEUX QUI VEILLENT

Nous veillerons jusqu’aux pieds de l’insomnie
Nous ne dormirons pas
Nous arracherons les yeux à la somnolence
Nous tirerons le lit du dessous des siestes naïves
Nous sommes de ceux qui veillent

Nos yeux révulsés larges
Rougis par l’enjeu
Ouverts à la vigilance
Nous marcherons devant le feu pour protéger la flamme de l’éveil

Nous ne fermerons pas l’œil du sommeil des nuits de miel
Nous ne dormirons pas du sommeil des ventres repus de mets princiers
Nous verrons au-delà de la brume
Au-delà des barrières barbelées
La luciole consolant la rosée

Nous ne dormirons pas ni la nuit lasse ni le jour las
Le regard en combustion
L’esprit en érection sur le lever brutal du jour
Nous veillerons sur le balbutiement des bourgeons qui frétillent

C’est aux yeux qui disent non à l’assoupissement
Que se révèlent les mystères enfouis sous les voiles
Nous ne dormirons pas
Nous ne connaitrons pas la joie du lit
Tant que nous file par les mailles de nos cerveaux
La fille de nos chevauchées torrides :
LIBERTÉ !

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who now pleads with the ancestors
seeing with naked eyes the gates of the dead

who now sees the impossibility of life
finding at last the answer to the question

and wonders how it could all be so ugly
if it be under the power of god

and wonders how it could be so petty
despite the promise of colour and glory

now asks of the ancestors
illumination of the path to the end

now despairs with the ancestors
the lack of light before

now understands, like the ancestors
the nature of the prison

as with imploding ego and drowning despair
the scales fall before the gates of hell.

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Once, I drove through Virginia slush to NRA Headquarters,

the winter air humming
                                 with the emptiness of my plan
which was not more than the hope of doing something

beyond thoughts & prayers, or any one word I might try

to use after seeing a self-defense catalog
with its photo of a young girl sitting cross-legged

against the cinderblock grid of a school wall as she grips
a bulletproof backpack,
                                 raising it up so that it conceals

her body more or less
                                 behind a kid-friendly style,
which means blue with a cascade of emojis. For the last mile,

I stared at strip mall signs—Jenny Craig, Elegant Dancing,
Lead by Example Tae Kwon Do—that made me feel as if

I was lost in someone’s idea of what America should be:

eye-catching, with plenty of parking, & a flailing
inflatable tube man
                            who rises & falls, arms raised, frantic

to explain that a memory foam mattress sells for less guaranteed.

Without an appointment or idea

                                               of what to do next,
I side-stepped the lobby’s Tom Selleck cutout telling me

something about freedom
                                     I forgot to write down & strolled into
the first room of the National Firearms Museum carrying

some vague hope of what? Whatever I’d come here to find,

it wasn’t Annie Oakley’s pistol or a custom 12-gauge
commemorating Princess Di’s wedding or the gold inlaid

half-dozen geese soaring between
                                                  trigger & bolt
of a shotgun belonging to Hermann Göring. A few lines

of wall text described Bulino style, which meant, I learned,
the process of utilizing
                                    thousands or millions of tiny dots

of varying size to create subtly shaded scenes, which ranged
from two coonhounds charging quail sheltered in long tangles

of grass, to a rifle’s photorealistic Rolls Royce careening toward

a woman—topless, lips parted—nestled against a tiger.
And peering into one
                               mounted magnifying glass I saw

a gun engraved with a Tribute to Picasso featuring,
I swear, a miniature Guernica that mimicked each detail

of his horse & bull, the one jagged light & those bodies

we’ve seen so many times—
                                          necks craned back, each month
in a wail—rendered in a way that reduced any trace

of sorrow to mere line & shape. America, I’m done

with prayers
                  & mirrored vitrines, the yellow dots
of emojis wide-eyed on a kid’s armored backpack

& black dots too numerous to count,

                                                    spread across
those maps that track gun violence & for what? Then again,

here I am speaking to you from within the silence of a poem

which is not much more than a form of prayer
we’ve heard too many times that makes

nothing change. By the time
                                         I’d finished wandering through
the other rooms, it was too late to do anything but drive

the same roads back to the hotel while half-listening
to classic rock & chasing after an idea about how we should

step back & see the shape made
                                                 by those black dots scattered

across the US map, although haven’t we done that already—
stepped back, & looked, & long known what we’ve made?

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holds itself for comfort. My father suggests we find a copy of The Green Book and pray over

it. A car full of black people driving past confederate statues. A strawberry zooms past my left

ear. The wind smashes it against the bark of cedar. A fish drowns itself in the Mississippi. The

one-eyed tabby is not allowed in the hotel. She too will float, but in a different city. Three Ritz

crackers on a paper plate. There was a bush separating the hotel from a supermarket. The

president tries to separate himself from responsibility, but we see him too. Put those back.

You’re not wearing hand-me-down underwear. I eat lifted grapes. You call it stealing, adults

call it building credit. Don’t you know I don’t know where we are? What to do in a country that

never wanted me here? Did you hear the one about God? I am blamed for laughing the hotel

room into an awkward silence. My aunt sleeps, deaf as hands in the dark. Two hurricanes in

the same week? Such sororal horror.

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You must surface to breathe your own air, first, but
only after everyone else has breathed.

Then the mothers began beaching themselves.
They said the mothers feel guilty because
they do not have a village. And, indeed,
no village showed up to roll the mothers
back into the sea. They said the mothers
have distanced themselves from toxicity
by which they meant the people who had
raised the mothers. They said the mothers,
though fatty, have lost their sheen. They can
no longer use the sun to orient their position
or to approximate the scale of their devotion.

The mother’s families had told them no man
will ever want you like that, which was
a relief for those who didn’t want men and a relief
for those who didn’t want too many men, but a sentence
nonetheless. They claimed no manufacturer could recreate
the nutrient layer by which a mother should feed a household
from infancy through adulthood. No one could identify
its thumbprint. Teachers in the schools asked the mothers
how to teach, and the doctors asked them why they
had come in, as they looked pointedly at the mother’s fins.

Do not feel guilty they said. And sailed away.

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من يدل هذه الصحراء إلى بيتها؟

الظلال تنغرز في الأفق
مثل أشواك من لهب.
أنا الساحر
في يميني ملائكة
وفي يساري أوهام.
على كتفي تسيح رمال أضاعت
دربها،
وفي رأسي دوامة تخترق النسيان.
الجيوش تتعقبني
ولا مفر لي
غير عباءة الله.
والصحراء تمتد
من العقل إلى العقل
حيث الرجاء
بالحجر القديم
وهو يثير زوبعة الموت
لأغنية لا تموت.
هذا سرابي يتناثر على الماء
وهذه شمسي تتدحرج
على الكثبان.
من أين يمرق هذا الباطل؟
أعبر الخديعة
إلى فنار لا يُرى،
حيث ثمة أوثان ترعى في الوادي،
ثمة خسارات تنوح
ثمة حرائق في الروح
ثمة أصابع لا تشير
وإشارات مقطوعة.
من يدل هذه الصحراء
إلى بيتها
قبل أن تهبط الأفاعي
مجرجرة هذا الليل الكسيح
إلى الهاوية؟
أيها الأب العالي
من ذا المهاجر الذي عاد
بلا جسد ولا وطن؟
أنا الساحر
على أسلاك الحدود علقت حلمي
ونزلت البحر
ولا قارب لي سوى القميص.

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my story
is the story
of stone
turning into sand
of a tree
turning into wood
of coal
turning into fire

my story
is the story
of becoming extinct

मेरी कथा

मेरी कथा
फावड़ा घिस जाने की
कारखाना उजड़ जाने की
सड़क टूट जाने की कथा है

मेरी कथा
पत्थर के रेत हो जाने की
पेड़ के
लकड़ी हो जाने की
कोयले के
आग हो जाने की कथा है

मेरी कथा
जाने हो जाने की कथा है

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The gloaming falls like ground.
In Holland lopes a hound.
A hound with yellow teeth.
He roves throughout the earth
a giant sable hound.

We’re lying in the round.
No longer fused together.
What bound us to each other
died between our teeth.
The gloaming falls like ground. 

Slagveld

De schemer valt als grond.
In Holland loopt een hond.
Een hond met gele tanden.
Er gaat door alle landen
een grote zwarte hond.

Wij liggen in het rond.
Niet langer van elkander.
Wat ons tezamen bond
stierf tusschen onze tanden.
De schemer valt als grond.

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Hаказание

Все звери когда-то были людьми, но потом
все согрешили – сами тому виной.
И Бог наслал на всех людей всемирный потоп,
и всех бывших людей по паре вывез в ковчеге Ной.
Каждый из них был порочен, блудлив и лжив.
Ослушанье и грех никогда не приводят к добру.
Все они провинились и, согрешив,
на глаза попались Господу и святому Петру.
И их превратили – каждого за свой грех –
кого в вола – пахали на нем, кого в коня – били плетьми.
А тех людей, кто провинился более всех,
Бог в наказание так и оставил людьми.

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