CONTENTS
NEW POEMS
Casting Out Rhymes
Pantoum in Wartime
Pantoum
Room
Fugue on a Line of Amr bin M’ad Yakrib
Paragraphs
Headaches
Syria Renga
October Sestina
Sapphics in Winter
Three Variations on Fado Themes:
Tahrîr
Sahar al-Beitunia
Black Boat
Alcaics for a Wedding
Fadwa: The Education of the Poet
Dahlia and Fadwa
. . . But in Things
Chapter
A Stranger’s Mirror
Ghazal: Outside the door
Ghazal: In the wind
Ghazal: For it
Ghazal: A woman
Râbi’a’s Renga
Luzumiät: Necessities of what was unnecessary
FROM WINTER NUMBERS
Against Elegies
Nearly a Valediction
Days of 1992
Elysian Fields
A Note Downriver
An Absent Friend
Cleis
Quai Saint-Bernard
Year’s End
Cancer Winter
FROM SQUARES AND COURTYARDS
Street Scenes: Sunday Evening
Scars on Paper
The Boy
Days of 1994: Alexandrians
Rue Debelleyme
Again, the River
Wednesday I.D. Clinic
Squares and Courtyards
from Paragraphs from a Daybook
FROM DESESPERANTO
Elegy for a Soldier
Crepuscule with Muriel
Alto Solo
Rue des Écouffes:
Rue des Écouffes
Les Scandaleuses
Les Scandaleuses II
Nulle part
Ghazal on Half a Line by Adrienne Rich
Grief
Explication de texte
Chanson de la mal aimée
Paragraph for Hayden
Quoi de neuf sur la guerre?
Ghazal
Omelette
For the 6th of April
Jean-Michel Galibert, épicier à Saint-Jean-de-Fos
A Sunday After Easter
Desesperanto
Canzone
Respite in a Minor Key
Morning News
Essay on Departure
SOME TRANSLATIONS
Claire Malroux: Grottoes
Marie Étienne: Ochre Night
Vénus Khoury-Ghata
Guy Goffette: Elegy for a Friend
Emmanuel Moses: from Preludes and Fugues
Jean-Paul de Dadelsen: The Last Night of the Pharmacist’s Wife
The Bridges of Budapest
FROM NAMES
Ghazal: In Summer
Lettera amorosa
Glose: O Caravels
from “O Caravels”
1953: The Bus to Menton
Glose: Storm
Storm
For Kateb Yacine
Ghazal: Waiting
Glose: Willow
For Anna Akhmatova
Glose: Jerusalem
from “The Year of the Dragon”
Letter to Mimi Khalvati
Letter to Alfred Corn
Ghazal: dar al-harb
Names
Ghazal: min al-hobbi ma qatal
Paragraphs for Hayden
Ghazal: Begin
A Braid of Garlic
Index of Titles and First Lines