In the Presence of Absence

You sit in a distant corner at the airport restaurant and wonder about the purpose of the journey: Am I going or coming back? No one is waiting for me when I go and there is no reason for me to return

They dance so as not to die. They leave yesterday behind them; a handful of ashes from a temporary fire. They do not think of tomorrow, lest expectation disturb the purity of improvisation. Today, today is all of time.

You do not know which Gaza you are in, and you say:

I came, but did not arrive.

I came, but did not return!

You wonder: What kind of a linguistic or legal wunderkind could formulate a peace treaty and good neighborliness between a palace and a shack, between a guard and a prisoner?

Are you I? Am I you? Teach me poetry, so I can elegize you now, now, now. Just as you elegize me!

. The jellyfish continued to sting you, but you never stopped loving the sea, not realizing that it was the source of the primordial rhythm

You read without understanding what you read, so you read more and more, relishing the ability of words to diverge from the ordinary. Words are waves.

The feather is not the bird, the tree is not the forest, and the threshold is not the house

No tribe has triumphed without a poet and no poet has triumphed unless defeated in love.

At that moment, the future became your approaching past!