When the tide smothers you

and asphalt laps across your name

and you’ve been buried in the brown

earth like a dwindling vein

you’ll serve as a memorial

to a million tall ladies,

queens of all trees that nourish us

Once you were wife to the sea

where melting with love onto his knees

he kissed your feet and went away

and rushing back bought you his salty tears to drink

You were the servant who supports

the house of man, you were

the tired traveler’s resting- place

standing as mother for the poor

In the expansive desert

Deeply fingering earth and fumbling sky

you gathered the berries of rain clouds

with friendly messages from streams

and seas and orbs that roll the sky

What can I tell the child asleep in my lap

if he should glimpse at the field’s end

the rays of a palm-frond, somehow left,

if he should sing the passionate

qasidas of the olden days?

What can I say to him, my lady of green?

I see the land strip its green badges off

and forget the feats and festivals of harvest

The world has swallowed its nostalgia

and calls to the hollow men:

“Come here-

Bring all the tar and concrete you desire.”