How does it start? Where does
One find the beginning? Not now
With these wakings, but then, years ago,
When she spoke while anointing the rose.
Who could imagine all this: cities and towns,
Fruit stalls, the bowls carved from trees,
Gowns of the brides,
Words that she spoke as her lips
Touched the rose.
Can I walk back through mansions of time,
To the moment she first saw me,
Quaking and heaved in my newness,
Dark-skinned and flung on her shore?
Or before, when I squirmed in the wealth of my father,
While she—continents distant, oblivious—
Slept in honey?
Or was it before, in our parents—was there a sign?
In the details of two countries?
In seasides and rooms
Where decisions were made?
Was there no note of our future,
Our flamed cataclysm?
What sounds could be heard in past centuries,
Primitive air?
And before. In the time before time
And the space before space. In the wavering
Haze of infinities. Does the universe know
Of its future unraveling? Was there no hint
Of her lips on the rose? And our meeting,
Our union, the births, and the lives?
This planet, this second, the dress that she wore,
Red of her lips touching red-petaled rose—
Was there no speck?
Yet her lips touched the rose. There, I can see it,
The silk and her hair.
Perhaps I might hear some faint echo—
I listen to scrapings and breath.
Is it Abbas asleep in his room,
Or the wallowing mouth of the sea?