Fady Joudah

The Horse Fell Off the Poem

The horse fell off the poem and the Galilean women were wet with butterflies and dew, dancing above chrysanthemum The two absent ones: you and I you and I are the two absent ones A pair of white doves chatting on the branches of a holm oak No love, but I love ancient love poems that guard the sick moon from smoke I attack and retreat, like the violin in quatrains I get far from my time when I am near the topography of place . . . There is no margin in modern language left to celebrate what we love, because all that will be . . . was The horse fell bloodied with my poem and I fell bloodied with the horse’s blood . . .