“the mirror says” (a poem)
The mirror says: a chalk house. The mirror says: leather box;
a courtyard with moss. The air frantic with fire and books
so pages fall to the cistern. The mirror’s back has no silver.
The book needs to begin, needs a rose, I said, a place to sit
and study the tea that falls from the tea plant, the light
falls steadily in the book, the leaves of light and of tea
in the mirror that is a book and a girl that reads looks up
a name in the moss, a green name in a red house, looks up
at hawk, at hawk-writing, and sees a girl in a red window
a green finger to her lips. I know her from the photo-
pictorial in the leather box. But the hawk and his name
the girl and the book; so the leaf and silver cloud, so back
and beguile; so sweater with moth-holes and scripts
from the Caliphate of WAS: they went into the book
that went into the flames. The girl and her ashes and hawk
are on a path to the courtyard; say then that the book
was banned and the tea was tea-ish, the mirror a glass.
What girl could read such a fire, what leaf would light
begin to write upon blue, or on moss, at stroke of noon?
[Letters to Michael: Dear Michael (1)]
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