Dido in Hades

 

Dido, once me, believed 

love-vows could be witnessed by the storm:

Breaking surf, unbroken, whipping wind

raising a rain shower—

the will of the gods an encircling wave

bringing the torch that the bridegroom gave.

Aeneas, steel, countered: 

"Gods live in the mind and the storm:

Phoibos' flame transcends the Shaker's swell,

balancing blood's fervor"—

his clear-cut piety a glass to fire,
reveal, and drown my funeral pyre.

I, shade, then existed

so weather had nothing to do with me:

Waning sliver-moon, airless, dead night

cloaking a soul inured—

what harrowing God comes now, a flaming turn,

straining my flint-will twixt bend or burn?

The Light Garden

You are bound up with that old tragedy in my heart, 

the farce of sorts we all played,

rearranging our Western doll houses 

on the empty plateaus, playing fields of famished demons. 

But something about being small children 

in the Himalayan light garden, 

flying our dreams from rooftops 800 years in the past, 

goes beyond grief. 

You caught my heart when you were born there, 

among the barren and feral mountains, 

a tiny baby like a star in the deep, empty sky. 

When we left Afghanistan, 

and when I left you again years later, 

the wings hesitantly lifting in the air— 

both times I dreamt over and over of fire, 

cradled love burning back into dirt, 

the curling, tortured remains of houses and hills crying out:

You can never go back.

Still you are bound up with my heart, 

still, you look up at me from out of the flames, 

the way Afghan eyes still stare within my wilderness, 

ancient sorrow mixed with mercy.