Relief

after Rumi

Emergence

after Pizarnik

Wall broken into window.
I ask, Where can I bury my knife?
Mourning my open shoulder.

Who are the mountain goats?
Do they exist? Where have you seen them?
Who is climbing the steep today?

What a terrible song, this hoofed wind.
What a terrible song, the begging of my body.
I am the knife. I am the knife. I am the knife.

The goat is waiting at the foot of the slope.
The sycamore tree by the peak. The old world,
a ghost. The valley, a coliseum.

Mountain goats sleep on their knees.
Someone is singing on the steep.
The echo carries. The snow weeps.

Allah:
There you are, behind the heavy wall.
There you are, singing on the steep.
There you are, the wound. The warning.

What am I, then? The breach?