The End of Exile
As the dead, so I come
to the city I am of.
Am without.
To watch play out around me
as theater —
audience as the dead are audience
to the life that is not mine.
Is as not
as never.
Turning down Shiraz’s streets
it turns out to be such
a faraway thing.
A without which
I have learned to be.
From bed, I hear a man in the alley
selling something, no longer by mule and holler
but by bullhorn and jalopy.
How to say what he is selling —
it is no thing
this language thought worth naming.
No thing I have used before.
It is his
life I don’t see daily.
Not theater. Not play.
Though I remain only audience.
It is a thing he must sell daily
and every day he peddles
this thing: a without which
I cannot name.
Without which is my life.
