1

Just a question:

And why couldn’t I be your neighbor
who lives in the alley
behind your building
one day
there’d be a revolution somewhere in the city
they’d cancel a few days of work
you’d walk through the neighborhood

The quiet alley
dusty cars all around
a warm smell from an unseen bakery
and music
but no work
so you’d search
where does this music come from…

But marriage!
And a child who wakes you at night
to show you his Martian captives
or a little girl who hops in puddles
and when we scold her for dirtying her feet,
she says, “But you’ll wash them for me.”

You’d ask about the music—
“Vivaldi,”
and you’d ask to try the violin—
“Be my guest.”

And they’d cancel work,
the whole of it ten minutes on my balcony
or long enough for a cup of tea
some fresh date biscuits
or an hour of sex
on this sunny winter morning
and afterward you will go your way—

Beautiful
light
rosy cheeked
and you wouldn’t
be a widow?

2

Again
I imagine the movie theater
now without seats.
Last time
there was a metal bird
a bomb
and a deep wound
and I wanted to know
what it was
a theater bleeds
but I was denied.

This time
no seats
no metal birds
no bombs
this time there is a movie
one any theater might screen
this time I will know
how a movie moves a man
who touches the earth
with only his shoes.

3

Sometimes my heart gets drunk
without me.
Two nights a week
it’s missing from its usual place
and after much focus
I feel a pulse near my eye
or behind my knee.
Yesterday
I looked at my heart
and scolded it
like a father might his little daughter.
It rested
eyes closed
like a hermit
asleep against a pillar
and where was it?
In the little toe of my left foot.
My heart searched for its voice
and asked, what do you expect
from a sailor
but that he sail
to the end of the world?

4

A century ago, maybe less
a girl might have been the most beautiful in the village,
she might have been crowned queen of a small kingdom
her donkey might have lived like a Rolls-Royce.

They’ve said almost everything about the media revolution
and yet no one’s lamented that it deprived us,
the simple folk on all continents, in all villages,
of our right to our own majesty.