Actors, Middle East
We put up theaters and take them down
wherever we may find ourselves
we put up theaters and set the stage
yet our destiny always wins
and it sweeps them as it sweeps us the actors and the actors’ director
the prompter and the musicians
scattered to the five hasty wings.
Flesh, mats, woods, make-up rhymes, emotions, peplos, jewellery
masks, sunsets, wails, and yelling
and exclamations and sun risings
thrown amongst us in disarray
(where are we going? where are you going?)
exposed nerves over our skin
like the stripes of a zebra or an onager
naked and airy, dry and burning
(when were we born? when they buried us?)
and stretched like the strings
of a lyre that always buzzes. Look also
at our hearts; a sponge
dragged on the street and the bazaar
drinking the blood and the bile
of the tetrarch and of the thief,
Libros Libertad 