A Soul Addresses Her Beloved in the Non-Green Zone

Nor did it do me any good to summon

Inspirations for him, with which I called him

In dreams and otherwise, so little he heeded them.

Dante, Purgatorio, Canto 30, lines 133–136

(translated by W.S. Merwin)

That little girl in the surf

is your double—my love,

my enemy—with the difference

of another. Sacred then,

because there she is

when you turn your head,

sovereign, mysterious, good.

Do you see? Not yours.

My grief for you is equal

to the awe I feel for the little girl.

But why?

It is I-as-you, you,

whom you have lost

and cannot find without closing

your eyes, shutting your ears.

I am here on the curb.

No, there in the market.

Not I as you, but ten thousand things

that make you large,

the girl in the doorway, the boy

at his mother’s side.

How to explain?

When I see the hammock

where I once lay behind your eyes

now filled with swords and holy lines,

I know you’re dying already

inside your loaded body.

I know you’re hosting a party

to which I’m not invited.

I tell you these things as your beloved

in the guise of a stranger

who speaks with a voice that does not rise

any higher than what you hear

in the silence of a snowy field.

Do you hear?

You have replaced me with a poet

who believes that paradise is a heaven

full of virgins singing your name.

I call to you across the hills

to be with me again in an empty room,

blind, deaf, and whole.

Restored.

It is you I love and miss.

See how human you are in the eyes

of the little girl who regards you with a smile.

See how invisible you are as a man

amidst the crowd.

Are you more angry at me than your enemy?

My constant chatter in the midst of war?

Forgive me.

You are so distant I can hear my echoes

in the chambers of your bones.

I can feel your thumb on the button

that He has not withheld from you

in all His wisdom.