Envoy to Palestine
I’ ve come to this one grassy hill
in Ramallah, off Tokyo Street,
to place a few red anemones
& a sheaf of wheat on Darwish’ s grave.
A borrowed line transported me beneath
a Babylonian moon & I found myself
lucky to have the shadow of a coat
as warmth, listening to a poet’ s song
of Jerusalem, the hum of a red string
Caesar stole off Gilgamesh’ s lute.
I know a prison of sunlight on the skin.
The land I come from they also dreamt
before they arrived in towering ships