Lifting her arms to soap her hair
Her pretty breasts respond – and there
The movement of that buoyant pair
Is like a spell to make me swear
...
The first night that I slept with you
And slept, I dreamt (these lines are true):
Now newly married we had moved
Into an unkempt house we loved –
...
For Joshua Mehigan
These are the dawn thoughts of an atheist
Vaguely embarrassed by what looks like grace:
...
Each summer, working there, I’d set off for
The fabled cities – Esfahan, Kashan,
Or Ecbatana, where Hephaestion died,
The poets’ towns – Shiraz and Nayshapour,
...
Who thickens from the shadows as you die?
Who silences your comprehending cry?
Emblem of all you lost and now inherit,
...
The sun comes up, and soon
The night’s thin fall of snow
Fades from the grass as if
It could not wait to go.
...
Life lies to hand in hoe, spade, pruning-knife,
Plain wooden furniture and wattle walls,
In those unspoken words ‘my husband’, ‘wife’,
In one another’s flesh which still recalls
...
The ruins, which are not very remarkable, are situated on an island which
is almost impossible to reach ...
Hachette Guide to the Middle East, p.1003.
...
The house is one bare room
And only tea is served.
The old man, mild, reserved,
Shuffles into a gloom
...
an epithalamium
Through high defiles of warehouses that dwarf
With undetermined age the passer-by,
...