I WILL SHOW YOU A SINGLE
TREASURE FROM THE TREASURES
OF THE RULER OF IYAR

1.

There once lived a woman who glorified Bird

with such exultation that the goddess turned

every song she sang into a thread.

She sang, and they hung from her mouth, the wool

dipped in vowels of madder and pomegranate

and consonants of indigo.

Her body was cocooned in them,

and her kinsmen praised her,

until she sang and spoke no more.

Come, pull on these threads, Khana trader, pay us in gold

coins of Iyar, pay us in salt and loukum,

unravel her mouth so she will speak again,

unravel her mouth so she will sing

madder and walnut out of Bird’s feathers.

2

There was a Khana woman who walked through the sands

in sturdy shoes of rose-adorned leather

to trade in spidersilk and in fine wool,

in salt and honey crystal, and in staves of blue wood.

Her lovers went with her—they hid in the sleeves of the whirlwind

and walked again in quiet weather,

stepped over the bones of forgotten beasts

the desert wind reveals in its open fist, before it closes again.

And they would sing of this, but they are forbidden,

all Khana women are forbidden from this,

and especially among strangers.

I have pulled this thread from your mouth, stranger,

walnut and pomegranate rind—is it a song I have touched?

You say you’ll never raise your voice again

even if I fill your hands with gold coins

but still, your eyes

will see the glory of Bird rising

arrayed in feather clouds, and inside

your voice, like a shriveled walnut rattling in its shell,

will sing her colors, hoarse with yearning,

will sing in all the ways that are forbidden to me.

3

There was a weaver in a tent of old leather

stooped on the reed floor. Her children had forsaken her,

this old woman with wool-burned fingers,

blind with Bird’s visions that the wind brought her, blind

with visions of the beasts rising from buried bone

that the wind reveals and hides in its clenched fist.

She would weave from fine wool and spidersilk, but she had only sisal,

and when sisal ran out she wove from dry reeds,

and when the reeds grew no more she wove a carpet from air,

an invisible road for the wind to step on,

to bring her a story that even the winds forgot.

Who are you, traders that I cannot see

in your rattling ornaments and your good creaking shoes,

aren’t your faces dry from wandering?

Give me of these fine threads that sing with indigo and weld,

I’ll make it into a carpet of my hurts,

knot it into a desert alive with Bird’s burning,

I’ll weave—with undyed wool and spidersilk—

the bones out of their hiding places.

I will blot out the screaming of my flesh

with the song of the wild madder

through a thousand nights until my work is done.

4

Like the wind that opens its fist

to reveal a thousand years of lives not its own,

so does the ruler of Iyar

open and close his coffers

on a whim, and only for himself.

Do you know this, spinner who chokes on a song?

Do you know this, trader with blood inside your shoes?

Do you know this, star-weaver with your slow, crooked fingers?

Yes, even for the ruler of Iyar

who knows nothing of this song or this wandering,

who knows nothing of this dry blood rattling inside the bones.