A Song from Armenia by Geoffrey Hill

Roughly-silvered leaves that are the snow
On Ararat seen through those leaves.
The sun lays down a foliage of shade.

A drinking fountain pulses its head
Two or three inches from the troughed stone.
An old woman sucks there, gripping the rim.

Why do I have to relive, even now,
Your mouth, and your hand running over me
Deft as a lizard, like a sinew of water?


- from The Songbook of Sebastian Arrurruz



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Proverbs by Nitoo Das

Wolves also cry, just
as worms sometimes
fly. A mouse will
spit on a dead cat. A poem
laughs
when you tell it to sit.
And some trees
are wiser than others.



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Wet Crow by Nitoo Das

Someday I will learn
to capture
the wet crow in words.
I will write about

the wing-shoulders
hunched a shade of
sleek
and the faded evening
caw-cawing against the dark

jade of trees.
I will mention
the curious cocking
of a wise-eyed aging
punk, greyer
and a strange wet

beard beneath the beak.

Someday I will know
how to etch lines
into the black shimmer
shake of body and

clutching claws that speak.



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