It was a year of brilliant water in Pennsylvania that final summer seven years ago, the sun's quick reprints

in my attache case: those students of mist have drenched me with dew, I'm driving away from that widow's house, my eyes open

to a dream of drowning. But even
when I pass --in Ohio-- the one exit to Calcutta, I don't know I've begun

mapping America, the city limits of Evanescence now everywhere. It was a year of brilliant water, Phil,

such a cadence of dead seas at each turn: so much refused to breathe in those painted reflections, trapped there in ripples of hills:

a woman climbed the steps to Acoma, vanished into the sky. In the ghost towns of Arizona, there were charcoal tribes

with desert voices, among their faces always the last speaker of a language. And there was always thirst: a train taking me

from Bisbee, that copper landscape with bones, into a twilight with no water. Phil, I never told you where I'd been these years,

swearing fidelity to anyone. Now there's only regret: I didn't send you my routes of Evanescence. You never wrote.

The trees were soon hushed in the resonance of darkest emerald as we rushed by on 322, that route which took us from the dead center of Pennsylvania.

(a stone marks it) to a suburb ten miles from Philadelphia. "A hummingbird," I said, after a sharp turn, then pointed to the wheel, still revolving in your hand.

I gave Emily Dickinson to you then, line after line, complete from the heart. The signs on Schuylkill Expressway fell neat behind us. I went further: "Let's pretend your city

is Evanescence—There has to be one— in Pennsylvania—And that some day— the Bird will carry—my letters—to you— from Tunis—or Casablanca—the mail

an easy night's ride—from North Africa." I'm making this up, I know, but since you were there, none of it's a lie. How did I go on? "Wings will rush by when the exit

to Evanescence is barely a mile?" The sky was dark teal, the moon was rising. "It always rains on this route," I went on, "which takes you back, back to Evanescence,

your boyhood town." You said this was summer, this final end of school, this coming home to Philadelphia, WMMR as soon as you could catch it. What song first

came on? It must have been a disco hit, one whose singer no one recalls. It's six, perhaps seven years since then, since you last wrote. And yesterday when you phoned, I said,

"I knew you'd call," even before you could say who you were. "I am in Irvine now with my lover, just an hour from Tucson, and the flights are cheap." "Then we'll meet often."

For a moment you were silent, and then, "Shahid, I'm dying." I kept speaking to you after I hung up, my voice the quickest mail, a cracked disc with many endings,

each false: One: "I live in Evanescence (I had to build it, for America was without one). All is safe here with me. Come to my street, disguised in the climate

of Southern California. Surprise me when I open the door. Unload skies of rain from your distance-drenched arms." Or this: "Here is Evanescence (which I found—though

not in Pennsylvania—after I last wrote), the eavesdropping willows write brief notes on grass, then hide them in shadows of trunks. I'd love to see you. Come as you are." And

this, the least false: "You said each month you need new blood. Please forgive me, Phil, but I thought of your pain as a formal feeling, one useful for the letting go, your transfusions

mere wings to me, the push of numerous hummingbirds, souvenirs of Evanescence seen disappearing down a route of veins in an electric rush of cochineal."

for Philip Paul Orlando

Author Notes: "This is from the central section of A Nostalgist's Map of America, which deals with the death of a friend of mine from AIDS. He was an undergraduate at Penn State when I was a graduate student, and we were very good friends. The last time I had seen him was 1979, he had graduated and left. Out of the blue, in 1985, I got a call from him in Tucson. I don't know whether he discovered my number or I had written a note to him, I don't remember the details. He told me that he and his lover were moving from Boston to California and they would be driving through Tucson and would like to come and see me, which they did."

My Notes: Beautiful poem. Ali was one of the finalists for the National Book Award for Poetry this year. He is an immigrant like I am: from India. He hails from Kashmir, what Shahjahan, a Moghul Emperor called, "Heaven On Earth" which it truely is!

Some day, if I should ever lose you, will you be able then to go to sleep without me softly whispering above you like night air stirring in the linden tree?

Without my waking here and watching and saying words as tender as eyelids that come to rest weightlessly upon your breast, upon your sleeping limbs, upon your lips?

Without my touching you and leaving you alone with what is yours, like a summer garden that is overflowing with masses of melissa and star-anise?

Translated by Albert Ernest Flemming