23 / 208
23
transit
on the shores of the new land you will
discard your mother tongue. clouds that drift by
above will be echoes of words
you once spoke, but now
withhold. long after you are gone
the knights of the air will reach
the figments of your imagination, love, worry, harmony,
as foreign as the giants of la mancha. the house
you once lived in
is a roughly timbered frame of smoke. it hovers
over you, barely perceptible, imponderable like you.
washed up onto the shore, an old comb,
the wrong sock in the right shoe.
the crumpled horizon in your hand,
an island of garish paper.