My teabag dropped into the paper cup
With sugar and milk, and stirred when
I try to dream of an answer.
Once, I was a stranger, and then
The strangeness began to echo,
Like a song with frequent rhymes,
So then ten times I was a stranger,
But I have left on my shoes, while
I am without my house slippers,
So why should I not go someplace
Very faraway?
I told someone else that I felt so far
From home, that there were parks that I
Missed that were filled with friends,
Who have vanished again.
There is a lake
That I used to visit, but that vision
Has departed from me.
My three old homes
Feel as though they have slipped from me,
Reeling from my young hands.
But it is not true.
I heard from my neighbors once again.
My stepfatherland is no longer sick,
And wracked by two crooked quacks, doping him.
The letter was written on a table;
I once had
Lunch there, eating potatoes and chicken,
With salt and pepper appearing only
As garnishes.
And she wrote the letter,
While the village loudspeaker swerved
Between centuries and regimes, with ballads
And dance music, interrupting weddings
And funerals.
She looked from her window
Onto the park where I used to play.
I do not wonder about it, but bread
Is better than perfume.
I wander near
To the ovens and hope that I will waft with
The scent, like ascending incense.
But my friends have told me of shopping malls
And speaking English, with English always nearby.
I cannot go there. I was in an old
Place where grandmothers ruled villages
With feasts and Marys and memory,
And those things are icons that I cannot
Remove, that I cannot question, they are
In a space above my head, where piety
Is at home.
