Calligraphies VII
For Fadwa Suleiman While the same rain fell on suburbs of exile and motherless children, whose courage was certainty whose impatience turned to doubt, she came in the door like a comrade, lover, friend, and took off her shoes – older than my daughter but too young to be my sister. *** Sister of someone who was forced to denounce her on television; pacifist in keffiyeh, but they got guns anyway – She rolled impatient exilic cigarettes, wrote fables of mourning : the mother tucked the child in her bed, and slit the dove’s throat. *** Slit-throat, cutthroat sun slashed wrists of early spring rain. Wolves at a distance give up verse panegyrics and howl like politicians. Is hope a fatal disease,