battalion of pear-shaped wives who do battle

in grocery store aisles,

I’ll be stalking the fields of concrete and ash,

the days pushing me from street

to street, leading me elsewhere —

to houses without ceiling fans

where daughters disappear and the walls weep.

I will weep too for high-heeled beauty queens,

for sewing machines and chickens in cages.

I will walk with my harness

and exiled feet through cravings

and renunciations, through heaps

of midnight wreckages

where magistrates of crows gather

to sing the same broken song

of unforgiving loss.

Lesson 7: How to Dream a Beautiful Death

In the dream of his death

Rinpoche returns to the room

of his youth — the wood beams,

the barking dogs, the fields

of potato and wheat; mother

with her prayer beads

by the window grilles,

muttering grace after grace;

sister in the kitchen

preparing flasks of tea.

In the dream of his death

Rinpoche sits in a fur-lined coat

hemmed into the window light,

waiting for father to come home

and hold him. Gone, gone,

he says, gone altogether beyond.

Because this is how he wants to go —

like an ochre flower in a field,

hungry and alive, the wind rushing in,

scattering him everywhere.

This is how it could be

in our own dreams of dying.

If we believed in mandalas, those maps

that guide us from periphery

to centre, and over to the other shore,

we’d know we’re always where

we’re meant to be — lying down

among the trees, covered in coats

of bark and mud, waiting for the sages

to lead us out of the forests, to the sea.

Homeland

What if the dead came back as bandits —

a whole army of them on herds of camels,

brandishing swords and Kalashnikovs?

What if they could reclaim our land

with weapons instead of words?

If they came to our roofless shelters

at night with salves for our wounds

and water for our lips?

If the dead could speak,

would they ask for us:

brother, child, wife.

Would they be able to mend

the rape’s scar,

breathe life into these corroded fields?

If they could lie down

on this dust-choked earth

to hold us,

would they trace

the wooden shafts of our bones,

dismantle the starlit domes

of these desert nights,

whisper, Love, sweet love,

it is I. I am home.

Memory of Wales

This is how it arrives, the memory

of Wales, on a day of scanty light.

I’m walking towards the playground.

I will never know newness like this,

or fear. I’m walking, and I’m eight.

I see a girl on the swing — my mother,

or at least, a version of my mother:

fair-haired, small. In the memory

of Wales it is often cold. I’m eight

and the cows are stalking light

like monsters in the playground.

I will never know newness like this.

I will never know a world like this.

This is my childhood and my mother’s.

Everything begins in the playground: