Marilyn Hacker
A collaboration in alternating renga
After she died, he’d lie down
on the great white bed
where she used to comb
his eyebrows with her fingers
until he fell asleep. He’d wake
to the early evening
muezzin, the roasting freekah,
and the poem:
Sitting in a garden
ropes of wisteria.
Sitting on damp grass,
she recites the Fatiha
on Dickinson’s lawn.
Slowly, her Anglophone friend
repeats each verse after her.
“When I go home, I’ll
either build a house or buy
a plot for a grave.”
“Insh’allah, you’ll build a house.
Keep that line for a poem.”
Green house with large
veranda, orange-black
swirls on tulip tiles.
Ibaa’ slices lemons,
dips them into salt, smiles
as the other women sing:
“Tal’aa min beit âb’ouha.”
In a few hours, she’ll wax
her entire body. Lemon sores
on tongue, newborn baby skin,
A sore on his tongue,
the accent he has now in
his father’s language—
again, a taxi driver
asked him “Âîna darasta?”
High-rise in Detroit,
hospital in south Beirut,
every cloned airport—
razed port town’s morning-coffee
syllables he’s never heard.
