REVERSALS
There are graves under the houses and houses
under the graves and linking the three
a broad stone staircase where the dead
go up and the living go down. They pass one another
wordlessly which might mean they don’ t know, or else
they’ re pretending not to know. You can smell
the orange grove on the hill; you can hear
children bowling barrel hoops down the street.
Two women gossip as they fill their jug at the spring.
Their secrets cloud the water.
Later they walk back through an avenue
of cypresses, carrying the jug like a bastard child.
TRAPPED
In the house across the street, in a room
directly opposite his, was a long mirror. When he looked
out of his window, he would see himself in the room
like a thief caught in a trap. He threw a stone.
His neighbor ran in to the sound of breaking glass,
then came to the window and shouted across:
“Thank God for that: whenever I looked in my mirror
there you were, doing something shifty behind my back.”
The first man turned away. The long mirror in his room
brought him face to face with his neighbor, knife in hand.
THE ACCUSED
Just as he locked the door, as he pocketed the key,
as he glanced over his shoulder, they arrested him.
They tortured him until they tired of it.
“Look,” they said,
“the key is your key, the house is your house,
we accept that now; but why did you put the key
in your pocket as if to hide it from us?”
They let him go, but his name is still on a list.