The lover doesn’t reach the beloved Except as a martyr or as a fugitive. - Mahmud Darwish

Under the dome of an aurora borealis
the beloved and the lover are frozen
into blocks of ice; this is how marine
          memory becomes a fossil.

Sun has swept the footprints from snow,
so that you can’t follow me or rescue me.
Facedown I lie in a muddy river to
         become the angel of an ice flake.

Pain all morning, pain all night
in the jawbone, behind the eye
in the ear's tunnel, at skin's border;
 	no sound, no vision, no sense, a mummy.

Winter stove fueled by burnt love letters,
a bottle of cheap wine, a carrot and an onion
on a cheap china plate, the last supper: tell Judas
	she must wait until I am well done.

Lichen on granite grows like hair on the pubis.
The beloved kneeling over my green tombstone
inscribes with her mouth this epitaph,
	“You never reached me, martyr and fugitive”