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Monday, March 28, Private Dinner Hosted by Bohemian Syrian Writers and Dissidents
Editor’s Note: This poem by Diane Glancy is being presented as part of our special focus on poetry during #PoetryMonth in April. Please read our introduction to the series.
I met a beautiful man who’d cooked chicken and rice
and there was a salad and other dishes on the table of his
apartment. I hugged him when I left, held my head
against his chest too long. We shared a kiss delicious as
the meal, and he who said no English, said, stay with
me. I couldn’t, of course, you know regrets the next
morning, the responsibility of responsible behavior, the
diligent heart of a diligent nation.
But I would like to have, and felt brittle as my papers
when they dried after I left them on the porch in the
morning rain. He still holds me against him as if our
ancestors long ago had left one behind when the other
started out to reach a new land, because they loved the
sea, because they loved travel, because they loved most
of all the nomad of the human heart, or the camel-train
starting out now toward the stars, because we’re not
satisfied, but striving down the ages to hold one another
in that separation, that necessary departure, we’re still
having to leave.
from The World Is One Place: Native American Poets Visit the Middle East, edited by Diane Glancy and Linda Rodriguez. BkMk Press, University of Missouri-Kansas City. Reprinted by permission.
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