Dust
When they opened me there was a smell of flowers-
delphinia, olive leaves, berries of nightshade
which crumbled like skin, giving off fragrance
as the centuries leaped into the air.
My flesh had joined my bones,
rotted by dried unguents, stuffed with linen.
I have become my own buried kingdom.
The boat never comes, the bird flies away
into the sun, and the sun disappears
under a lid of gold and glass. Long since
I have put aside my gifts: the slings and bows,
the diadem, the chariot of wine. In eternity
you hear the sound of water like an endless song
sung by your mother before you were conceived.
If you become a temple, you will be an eternal mystery,
dark eyes under a cloak of stone,
moving through history like a heavy ghost.
What was my life? On a painted chest
my queen is stroking my shoulder with balm.
In an alabaster jar
lies the burnt remnant of my heart.
They went back through the long tunnels, leaving prayers
to seal my dead city. Under the wind and sun
the sand heaves silently. O God, I am but a little space,
a nest of dead wings. . . .
You who open my soul, remember me in my youth,
even as I was on the day I was born,
hastening toward death on golden feet.
