From What the Welsh and Chinese Have In Common

In Kurdistan

The moan of the muezzin,

taunts you like the silhouette

of a bat or a mosquito's drone.

At times there is such clarity,

your muscles cramp as if scolded

by small birds; your flesh,

their cage; their perch, your bones.

Too many nights you want

to set them free, let them fly

toward home; their wings against

the cover of stars, knives escaping

a tent you never intend to close.

All that the sun burns, men and land, refines

to rare metal, pounds to tested form,

a knife with jeweled hilt and thin blade.

It repeats itself, this welcome,

in the knife always hung in the main

room where in other times a gun

would hold the family's pride,

point to the roof vent where swallows

divine the only cool air. Outside

the minaret, a knife hilt-deep

in the heart of the village,

holds back the call to the tents,

to the life without foundations,

even as the river, that moving

scar, creates the valley in its

leaving. As the river takes

the soil on its slow meander,

our common vision--the Ark

stranded on Ararat, the memory

of its keel balanced on a ridge,

edge to keen edge--urges

on its single dove, our winged messenger

cut free from the nation of strangers.

Paul_Jones@unc.edu

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