Three Cantos Ongoing

i.

You were saying
how you can never
come to this road again,
or these houses
surrounded by sand,
or to the broke-bleached walls
where you presided over coffee.
I do not expect you,
I do not wait for you here,
in a thirsty and obscene space
among dark and broken people.

ii.

A man cannot love
until he is stricken by
the love of others;
everything before that
is a child's calculation
that gratitude yields benefit.
It risks nothing, cheap or dear,
not even passion. For love given
cannot be returned,
does not fail,
cannot die a natural death
but hankers for replenishment
even when the seasoned mind knows
the source is empty, even in dust:
Sometimes, then, it is memory
trying to find real objects
among old symbols--
in letter, sound and art.
And sometimes it is fear.

iii.

Never return to this place,
its men bred out of the ground
in just two modes,
mud and dust--
or women's love tarnishing whispers.
The disapproving fathers
and loyal mothers. Love runs
for its life away from the
blazing sun of their deception
the parched and leafless
untruth of their truth.