Status Updates From A Nostalgist's Map of Ameri...

I too was human. I who now live here
at the end of the world […]
dreading the night, when
under the warm stars
we recall men we have loved,
their gestures forever refusing us.

Then why let anything remain
when whatever we loved
turned instantly to stone?

The breezes are lost
travelers today,

knocking, asking
for a place to stay.

I tell them
to go away.

All night they knock, asking
if the Beloved
had ever passed this way.

All night I keep
the heart shut.

There again is memory
at my doorstep-

jasmine crushed under
departing feet.

The moon extinguishes
its silver pain

on the window.

Certain landscapes insist on fidelity.
Why else would a poet of this desert
go deep inside himself for shade?
Only there do the perished tribes live.
The desert insists, always: Be faithful,
even to those who no longer exist.