gaze

by Rula Jurdi 

after war, it grows again, the

appetite for domes and curly

words, myths beyond ourselves

in the old souk, a stone is erected

for the gaze, the unassailable

outside reassured the haziness

of the inside

there is a plaza to invent, fresh

piety, simulacra of eyelashes and

enameled lovers, which once

breathed in Vahe'́s photos

silence is far away, and we can

no longer defeat narration or the

sovereign bookshop they installed

the poem has failed, in particular,

and the land as skin, secure,

as smell, voluptuous, is neither man

nor woman

the Kalashnikovs that used to blush

for the city, have altered the

movement of memory, its limbs

and skulls

we keep rehearsing our future roles,

with all that yellow. But when

shall we be convinced of sadness?

of the buried city?

it is majestic and viridian, the

disappearance, and time flows in all

directions to bury the pain of language

a few ovule-bearing pines are

squeezed into the scene, slimming

down the past to gossips

from the other broken side, the sea

is not tender, but continual, one million

horses losing their throats again