I beat her for her foolishness.

The children are hungry, I said,

the cow is old,

the money collector is after my blood,

and you steal like a magpie —

half a month’s wage — to decorate

your nest like a shiny jewel?

The monsoon finally arrived the year I left,

dripped through the thatch,

peeled paint off the walls.

The wells grew full and overflowed.

The farmers rejoiced in the fields.

My son sat with his mouth open

catching drops of water like a frog.

My wife clung to the walls and wept.

When I fall asleep on the pavements

in this city, I try to imagine my wife’s skin

against mine, the kohl in her eyes,

the white walls, the whole village sky

bearing down upon us

with all the weight of the stars.

I think of returning to that life,

but mostly I try to remember

how the world was once.

I want to open my mouth like my son,

and swallow things whole —

feel water filling all the voids,

until I am shaped back into existence.

Lament — II

By morning she has lost

a husband, a home, a dream,

a night of her life

that will never return.

She tries not to think

of what she will do,

of what this means

in the long history of loss.

There are tigers dying,

she knows, nuclear threats

that might eradicate

the world.

Forests are disappearing,

and seas are being emptied.

She tries not to think

of her hunger

against the magnitude of all this.

Her small hunger against

the failure of civilizations.

She thinks instead

of evening,

how once again

it will grow long and bright,

how eternity that seemed

so paltry just minutes ago

could become eternal once again.

She thinks of the moon

rising in the cleft of the distant hills.

It is the only comfort

she allows herself —

to relinquish the things she loves

as if they were never hers.

Walking Around

after Neruda

It happens that I am tired of being a woman.

It happens that I cannot walk past country clubs

or consulates without considering the hags,

skinny as guitar strings, foraging in the rubbish.

All along the streets there are forlorn mansions

where girls have grown up and vanished.

I am vanishing, too. I want nothing to do with gates

or balconies or flat-screen TVs.

It happens that I am tired of my veins and my hips,

and my navel and my sorrows.

It happens that I am tired of being a woman.

Just the same it would be joyous

to flash my legs at the watchmen playing chess,

to lead the old man at house 38

onto the tarred road to lie down

under the laburnum dripping gold.

I do not want to keep growing in this skin,

to swell to the size of a mausoleum.

I do not want to be matriarch or mother.

Understand, I am in love

with only these undrunk breasts.

And when Monday arrives with the usual