BLACK HORSES

The enemy’s dead think of me in their eternal sleep mercilessly
while the ghosts take the stairs and house corners
the ghosts that I picked off the road and gathered like necklaces
from others’ necks and sins.

Sin goes to the neck…there I raise my ghosts, feed them
and they swim like black horses in my sleep.

With the energy of a dead person the last Blues song rises
while I think of jealousy
the door is a slit open and breath enters through the cracks, the river’s
respiration, the drunks,
and the woman who wakes to her past in the public garden…

and when I fall asleep
I find a horse grazing grass
whenever I fall asleep
a horse comes to graze my dreams.

On my desk in Ramallah unfinished letters and photos of old friends,
a poetry manuscript of a young man from Gaza, a sand hourglass,
and poem beginnings that flap like wings in my head.

I want to memorise you like that song in elementary school
the one I carry whole without errors
my lisp and tilted head and dissonance

the little feet that stomp the concrete ground with fervor
the open hands that bang on desks…

All died in war, my friends and classmates…
and their little feet remained, and their excited hands, stomping
the classroom floors, the dining tables and sidewalks,
the backs and shoulders of pedestrians…
and wherever I go
I hear them
I see them.