Fuel (5 page)

The face of the clock at 4
A.M
.

doesn't have many friends.

Its wishes are thin and dark,

to stay humble, close to the floor.

Without it I am a crumb of talk

stuck to a plate.

The day unfolds its sad sack of chores,

the broom loses two more hairs.

Without it I am the letter carrier

who never receives

any mail herself.

Because the eye has a short shadow or

it is hard to see over heads in the crowd?

If everyone else seems smarter

but you need your own secret?

If mystery was never your friend?

If one way could satisfy

the infinite heart of the heavens?

If you liked the king on his golden throne

more than the villagers carrying baskets of lemons?

If you wanted to be sure

his guards would admit you to the party?

In her first home each book had a light around it.

The voices of distant countries

floated in through open windows,

entering her soup and her mirror.

They slept with her in the same thick bed.

Someday she would go there.

Her voice, among all those voices.

In Iraq a book never had one owner—it had ten.

Lucky books, to be held often

and gently, by so many hands.

Later in American libraries she felt sad

for books no one ever checked out.

She lived in a country house beside a pond

and kept ducks, two male, one female.

She worried over the difficult relations

of triangles. One of the ducks

often seemed depressed.

But not the same one.

During the war between her two countries

she watched the ducks more than usual.

She stayed quiet with the ducks.

Some days they huddled among reeds

or floated together.

She could not call her family in Basra

which had grown farther away than ever

nor could they call her. For nearly a year

she would not know who was alive,

who was dead.

The ducks were building a nest.

Over our heads the words hung down

with giant sparkling margins.

I was try-trying again

every day of my life.

That's why I've been followed

by stacks of blank notebooks, why

any calendar page with nothing written on it

strikes me full of ravenous joy.

When a year changes,

the little stuffed man

pitches into the flames,

his paper-bag body fattened by

ragged lists, crumpled mail.

Between 8
P.M
. when I scrawl

the vanishing year on his chest

and midnight, we fall in love.

His rueful grin, his crooked hat!

He burns fast in the backyard pit.

Then a deep quiet plucked by firecrackers

under a weirdly lit city sky.

No plans come to mind.

I just stand there with my hands out

in smoke while something else

wonderful dies.

I want her

to dig up

every plant

in her garden

the pansies

the pentas

roses

ranunculus

thyme and lilies

the thing nobody knows

the name of

unwind the morning glories

from the wire windows

of the fence

take the blooming

and the almost-blooming

and the dormant

especially the dormant

and then

and then

plant them in her new yard

on the other side

of town

and see how

they breathe

Welcome to Abu Dhabi
,

the Minister of Culture said.

You may hold my falcon as we visit
.

He slipped a leather band around my arm

and urged the bird to step on board.

It wore a shapely leather hood,

Or otherwise
, the host described,

the bird might pluck your very eyes
.

My very eyes were blinking hard

behind the glasses that they wore.

The falcon's claws, so hooked and huge,

gripped firmly on the leather band.

I had to hold my arm out high.

My hand went numb. The heavens shone

a giant gold beyond our room.

I had no memory why I'd come

to see this man.

A falcon dives, and rips, and kills!

I think he likes you though
.

It was the most I could have hoped for then.

We mentioned art.

We drank some tea.

He offered to remove the hood.

I said the bird looked very good just wearing it.

Alright by me
.

Once singing would rise

in sweet sirens over the hills

and even if you were working

with your trees or books

or cooking something simple

for your own family,

you washed your hands,

combed water through your hair.

Mountains of rice, shiny shoes,

a hurricane of dancing.

Children wearing little suitcoats

and velvet dresses fell asleep in circles

after eating 47 Jordan almonds.

Who's getting married? Who's come home

from the far place over the seas?

Sometimes you didn't even know.

You ate all that food without knowing.

Kissed both cheeks of anybody who passed,

slapping the drum, reddening your palm.

Later you were full, rich,

with a party in your skin.

Where does fighting

come into this story?

Fighting got lost from somewhere else.

It is not what we like: to eat, to drink,
to fight
.

Now when the students gather quietly

inside their own classroom

to celebrate the last day of school,

the door to the building

gets blasted off.

Empty chairs where laughter used to sit.

Laughter lived here

jingling its pocket of thin coins

and now it is hiding.

It will not come to the door dressed as a soapseller,

a peddler of matches, the old Italian

from the factory in Nablus

with his magic sack of sticks.

They have told us we are not here

when we were always here
.

Their eraser does not work
.

See the hand-tinted photos of young men:

too perfect, too still.

The bombs break everyone's

sentences in half.

Who made them? Do you know anyone

who makes them?
The ancient taxi driver

shakes his head back and forth

from Jerusalem to Jericho.

They will not see, he says slowly,

the story behind the story,

they are always looking for the story after the story

which means they will never understand the story.

Which means it will go on and on.

How can we stand it if it goes on and on?

It is too long already
.

No one even gets a small bent postcard

from the far place over the seas anymore.

No one hears the soldiers come at night

to pluck the olive tree from its cool sleep.

Ripping up roots. This is not a headline

in your country or mine.

No one hears the tiny sobbing

of the velvet in the drawer.